


Exactly Where We Belong

by novelized



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelized/pseuds/novelized
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chord Overstreet doesn't want to like Darren, but the sad truth of the fact is that he can't help it. Darren Criss, that asshole, is impossible to dislike.<br/>(alternatively: Something Went Down in the Tent at Coachella.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exactly Where We Belong

The glitz and glamour of being the new kid on Glee is remarkably short-lived. One day Chord’s doing magazine interviews, phoners, having his picture taken when he’s trying to buy some food from that great taco joint down the street, and the next it’s back to radio silence and peace. (Chord learns pretty quickly that celebrities only want peace when they don’t have it. Being left alone by the paparazzi is a death sentence in Hollywood. You’re only relevant as long as you’re being mobbed.)

It takes a little getting used to, this fading into the background thing, because, as his agent had explained countless times, he seemingly had “everything going for him.” The looks, the voice, the modesty of a homeschooled Tennessee upbringing—Chord doesn’t like to brag, but he knows that he’s basically Los Angeles rolled into a neat little package. With abs and blond hair to boot.

So maybe being on Glee isn’t everything he’d expected. It’s still _amazing._ It’s still providing him with countless opportunities he’d otherwise never receive. But it’d be nice to be out there. To be a household name. To be the topic of conversation at the dinner table, if people still ate around their dinner tables anymore.

“Should’ve gone with the gay thing,” his sister tells him, laughing.

It stings in a way that brutal honesty sometimes does. It wasn’t an intended slap in the face, but it felt like one. Like it was his choice for Ryan Murphy to change his mind—true, Chord hadn’t begged and pleaded his case, hadn’t raised hell when he’d found out about the new direction, had maybe even felt relieved when he heard the news. If he was being honest, he’d never wanted to be the gay kid on Glee. The hot nerd or the dorky football player. Those he could do. All of the paradox with none of the social stigma.

(Chord’s not good at social stigmas. Chord’s never known anything other than fitting in.)

But that’s what it boils down to; that’s the truth. Joking or not, his sister has a point. Chord Overstreet is a kid on a fairly successful Fox show. He’s a member of a talented ensemble. He’s _that guy_ , you know, the shirtless one—and it’s not a terrible gig, being that guy.

But, he can’t help but think, with maybe just a touch of bitterness, he’s no Darren Criss.

 

There are two types of people on the cast of Glee, as far as he’s concerned: those he’d hang out with outside of work, and those who stay on a strictly ‘all right, see you tomorrow’ basis. Cory, Mark, Harry; he loves those guys. He’s crashed at their various bachelor pads more times than he can count. Lea, Amber, Heather; those are his girls. They go to dinner, they go clubbing, they make sure Chord doesn’t cross the line and take one tequila shot too many.

And then there are The Others.

He’d felt a weird divide between them when he’d first joined the cast, and it was even more pronounced now. It wasn’t like a _thing._ There were no fights or backstabbing dramas, as far as he could see. It was just that the set of Glee was a lot like the real world: you couldn’t always get along with everyone.

There are some people Chord has no desire to get to know better. They can chat in between takes or share a pizza after a long night of filming, but he’s not going to invite them back to his place. He’s not going to ask for their phone numbers or treat them to dinner.

Not that he’s naming names, but a certain stiff-haired actor in a private school uniform falls under that umbrella. They haven’t even _met_ , not yet, not officially; he’d seen him on set a grand total of once and he’d been too busy trying to get his Gatorade unstuck from the vending machine to make any grand gestures of welcoming—and besides, they were both the new kids on the block. It didn’t have to be his job.

But he watched him traipse around the set like he owned the place, totally at ease with the crew members it had taken Chord weeks to feel comfortable enough talking to. Laughing openly. Cracking jokes.

Chord can understand, objectively, why he’s a big deal. The gay storyline. “This is a big thing,” Ryan had told him when he’d first signed on. Leaning forward, hands clasped between his legs. Like he believed in him. No one had looked at him like that in a few weeks. “A huge thing. This is monumental. I want you to think about this. About what you’re agreeing to.”

He thinks it’d be pretty nice to be monumental.

In the end, though, things changed. Chord wasn’t right for that _specific_ job—“but don’t worry,” Ryan had told him, distractedly this time, scribbling on a piece of paper. “We’ll find a place for you.”

And they had.

Chord can’t help, though, but think that the unspoken divide between cast members had strengthened—but that was okay. If he put his head down and ignored it, everything seemed just fine. It was, after all, easier to pretend that it didn’t even exist.

 

“Hi,” Darren Criss says on a Tuesday morning. “I’m Darren Criss.”

Chord blinks and shields the sun from his eyes with one hand. They had an hour break for lunch, and he’d taken his sandwich outside to eat in silence on the pavement, soak up a little heat before heading back into the heavily air conditioned building. This was his me-time. This was the only time of the day he got to be alone, and now his personal space was being encroached upon by this kid in a navy jacket.

He makes a noncommittal grunt and swallows a large bite of turkey. “I know,” he says finally, when his throat is cleared, and he returns Darren’s handshake but doesn’t let it linger. “I’m Chord.”

“Ooh, this is awkward.” Darren bounces on his heels a little, like he’s filled with excess energy and it’s spilling over. He doesn’t sit down next to Chord, just stands beside him, so their dynamic looks weird, completely out of sync. “Old boyfriend meets new boyfriend.”

Chord just looks at him.

But Darren continues on as though he hadn’t noticed Chord’s general lack of response. “Well, maybe,” he amends, sticking his hands in his pockets. Chord considers telling him that there’s a scuffmark on his left shoe, but he doesn’t. It doesn’t seem important. “If it goes that way. It might not. I could be here for another episode and then get hit by the bus on the way to Regionals, who knows.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Chord says, not entirely against that scenario, stuffing another piece of crust in his mouth.

“Well, I’ve got to hit up makeup. Just thought I’d introduce myself. Nice to meet you,” Darren says, going in for another handshake. Apparently he’s a proponent of physical contact. He flashes a smile at Chord, all teeth, and heads off, flanking the side of Ryan Murphy’s assistant what’s-her-name as he goes, totally effortless, like they’d been best friends their entire lives.

So that’s how he meets Darren Criss, officially.

Chord sighs and goes back to eating his sandwich.

 

Chord gets the new script on a Tuesday. He’s not a routine-oriented guy by any means, but he likes to be alone when he opens them, and he likes to be comfortable, and he likes to go at it in one straight read-through, like he’s watching the episode himself. Sometimes things happen on paper that legitimately shock the hell out of him. But he figures that’s Ryan’s game. That’s how he gets his rocks off, throwing curveball surprises at the viewers that no one sees coming.

He doesn’t really find downtime until he wakes up Wednesday morning, and he showers and pulls on a fresh pair of boxers before climbing back under the blankets and flipping to the first page. It takes a while to get through the whole thing. It seems like it’s going to be a good episode, what with the twists and turns and musical numbers, but—and he goes back and double checks, because at first he’s pretty sure that can’t be right—Chord has three lines.

Three.

In a forty-four minute episode, that feels massively underwhelming.

He doesn’t, like, normally count anyone else’s, doesn’t care enough to make comparisons. Being on Glee is not a competition. These are not his _competitors._ It’s just sort of overwhelmingly obvious that the new kid, Darren, he’s in a number of scenes. He’s got about sixty times as many lines as Chord, and they’re not even little inconsequential one-liners that are thrown in just for good measure.

Chord’s not _mad._ That would be stupid. He doesn’t get mad.

A little disappointed, maybe, but that, he figures, no one has to know.

He gets to the studio at the same time as everyone else, but instead of congregating in their little inner circle he moves straight through the building and into the parking lot behind the set. It’s private, blocked off, and generally unsupervised, so Chord doesn’t feel weird about lying down on the pavement, legs kicked out, hands pillowing his head. He closes his eyes and counts his breaths, a trick his mom taught him when he was little to avoid a temper tantrum. He’s not going to have a temper tantrum, but he feels the familiar pang of displaced anger.

A few minutes later he hears the scuff of shoes against cement, but he ignores it, thinking that person might cast him a funny look and go silently about their business. But the footsteps stop just beside his shoulder, and when he turns his head to look, Darren is lowering himself to the ground, right there beside him. He doesn’t offer up a greeting; no “hey,” no “how’s it going,” not even a “why are you laying in the middle of the parking lot?” He just joins him, like this was a totally normal thing to do.

“S’up?” Chord says, because the silence is weirding him out. He was here first, and yet he feels like he’s the one disturbing Darren’s peace. Damn it.

Darren lets out a sigh, a heavy and content exhale. Like he’s chilling on a beach in Cancun instead of a cement parking lot in the middle of the morning. “It’s weird being on this set,” he says, which doesn’t exactly answer Chord’s question, but whatever. “I’m used to spending all my time at Dalton. There’s a lot more activity here. Hard to find five minutes to yourself, huh?”

Chord wants to say _uh, yeah, case in point_ but he just says “hmm” instead, which probably isn’t much better.

“It’s cool to see you guys in action, though,” Darren adds, eyes fluttering shut. He has ridiculously long eyelashes for a dude. Chord turns his neck back and stares straight up at the cloudless sky. “You can really appreciate the team effort when you’re watching from the outside, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Chord says. He doesn’t feel like a team player. Team players didn’t usually escape outside to avoid their more prominently-featured teammates.

If Darren’s thinking along the same lines, though, he doesn’t say it. In fact, he just stretches out and lets the sun’s rays hit his face, settling into the stillness like he hadn’t ever disrupted it in the first place. That almost makes Chord more uneasy than when they were talking. The seconds stretch by, torturously slow and tense.

But then Darren pops up suddenly, just as energetic as he’s ever been, and he leans over Chord so that he’s blocking the sun, and it’s just Darren’s face looming in front of his, five inches away. “Hey,” he says excitedly, “do you like to listen to electronica?”

“Um.” Chord’s mouth twitches a little. It feels like a trap. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

And then Darren’s climbing to his feet and reaching out for Chord, no hesitancy whatsoever, and Chord’s body is working faster than his brain so he takes his hand and lets himself be pulled up. “Come on, I have something I want you to hear,” Darren says, walking away without even looking back, like he just _expects_ Chord to follow.

For lack of better options, Chord does.

 

Chord’s half-asleep in his boxers when his phone buzzes. He’s lying heavily on his couch, legs dangling over the armrest, the Playstation cord wrapped around his left wrist—and he’s comfortable enough to contemplate not answering, but you never know when destiny could be calling. Literally.

So he digs into his pocket and fishes his iPhone out, and it’s not a call from a destiny: it’s a text from someone he doesn’t recognize.

 _what’re you up to?_ it reads.

Chord squints at the number but, nope, he definitely has no idea who it is. _Who is this?_ he texts back, takes a swig from a warm can of flat Coke, and two seconds later it’s vibrating again.

 _megan fox._

Obviously someone’s fucking with him. Chord rolls his eyes. _Very funny. Srsly who is this??_

Chord’s phone buzzes yet again; but instead of a text in response, the mystery number is calling. He struggles into a sitting position and eyes the digits one last time before picking up. Even then, he keeps his voice low and guarded, just in case. He’s heard about celebrity numbers leaking to the Internet, the sort of harassment he could face if it turned out to be a rabid fan. (He hasn’t had a rabid fan yet. He’d kind of like to.)

“Hello?”

“I’m disappointed in you.” The voice on the other line is familiar, but not immediately recognizable. “What if I really was Megan Fox and you’d just missed the opportunity of a lifetime?”

“Maybe I know it’s not Megan Fox because she’s lying in bed with me as we speak,” Chord says, taking the bait, playing along, the corners of his mouth tugging into a smirk in spite of himself.

“Ooh, touché. Very nicely done.”

“Who is this?” Chord asks for the third time.

“Queen Elizabeth the First.”

“In that case I hope you’re calling for phone sex. I really have a thing for British royalty.”

“Then I hope you also have a thing for necrophilia.”

“Huh?”

“You know Queen Elizabeth the First is dead, right?”

Chord bites down on the inside of his cheek. “Um, yeah,” he says, but only because it’s too late to think about who’s dead and who isn’t, and besides, history was never his strong suit.

The voice on the other line laughs, easy and unhindered. “This is Darren,” he says finally, and right, that makes sense. The voice. “I got your number from Chris,” he adds before Chord even has to ask, “who, by the way, made me promise I wouldn’t do anything immature like send you twelve pizzas or ask you if your refrigerator’s running.”

“You just impersonate Megan Fox instead,” Chord says. “Definitely not immature.”

Darren laughs again. He has a good laugh, a full laugh. “My Megan Fox impersonations have gotten me very far in life, I’ll have you know.”

“So _that’s_ how you got all those lines in last week’s episode,” Chord jokes, and he doesn’t mean for it to come off bitter, but it kind of does anyway. Darren’s silent for a second; whether he’s insulted or just being thoughtful—Chord doesn’t know him well enough to know the difference, and he doesn’t want to.

“Nah,” Darren says finally, and the laugh’s gone from his voice, but Chord can still hear the trace of a smile, “that one was pure bribery.”

“Teach me your tricks,” Chord says, as a peace offering. To smooth things over.

“No can do, young grasshopper. My skills were God-given, not learned.”

Chord untangles himself from his Playstation controller. When he sits up more fully, there’s a Cheeto stuck to his thigh. He makes a face and peels it off and throws it lazily towards the trashcan in the kitchen, missing by a mile. He’ll get that later.

“Well,” Darren says in the wake of the silence, “I’ll let you get off here. I just wanted to say what’s up and tell you that you were really awesome yesterday.”

That catches Chord off guard. “Oh. Uh. Thanks, dude. You were too.”

“Thanks, dude,” Darren echoes, and he might be mocking Chord, but whatever. “We should hang out sometime. You have my number now. And… I’m going to hang up before I start to sound even more like I’m on the tail end of a disastrous first date. Goodnight, Chord. I’ll walk myself to the door.”

Darren hangs up before Chord can even get another word in. He stares at the phone, a little baffled, contemplating whether or not he actually wants to plug Darren’s number into his contacts list.

In the end, though, he does it. He figures it’ll come in handy if he ever feels like ordering twelve pizzas, or something immature like that.

 

A week later Chord’s one of the last ones to get to the set. He’d woken up late, gotten shampoo in his eye, put his shirt on backwards, spilled an entire fucking gallon of milk, bashed his knee on the coffee table, and locked his keys in the car—all before eight AM. Everyone’s pissy that they had to wait for him to arrive, and he doesn’t blame them. He’s pissy too.

When he gets there, though, Darren hands him a grande Starbucks coffee, still hot.

“Thought you could use a pick-me-up,” Darren says.

Chord’s name is scribbled on the side of the cup. Buying him a drink was a premeditated action.

He looks at Darren.

“Thanks,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else _to_ say.

Darren just shrugs him off. Like it was no big deal at all.

 

Lea has a Christmas party, just for the cast members. She’s always the one planning the get-togethers, making sure everyone’s included. She’s also the one that insists everyone wear their tackiest holiday-themed ensemble, which is how Chord winds up sipping spiked eggnog in a Rudolph sweater just before midnight. He thinks, vaguely, it could be worse.

They’re all there; they all make the perfunctory “shouldn’t I be sick of you yet?” jokes, but none of them are. That wall Chord had built at the start of the season was dissolving: these were his friends. They were his _family._

“I feel like I should be tired,” Cory says, sidling up next to him, “but I’m not.” He hadn’t come dressed for the theme, but Lea had jokingly reprimanded him so he’d overcompensated by borrowing a Santa suit from the guy next door. At the beginning of the night he’d stuffed throw pillows up the jacket, but they’d fallen out around drink three and now he just looks like a scrawny, underweight Santa Claus with a wispy, pathetic beard.

“Yeah, me neither,” Chord says, stirring his cup around. He smirks. “But I’m surprised you’re not, old man.”

Cory laughs and slugs him in the arm. Eggnog sloshes over the glass and onto the carpet, and Chord rubs at it with the tip of his shoe, hoping it’s not noticeable.

‘I’m 28 going on 17,” Cory says, ignoring the fact that he’d made Chord spill his drink. “And I wouldn’t talk shit, you’re looking at your future right here.” He reaches out and pinches Chord’s cheek with the hand not holding his martini. Chord halfheartedly swats him away. “With that baby face, you’ll be playing high school until you’re 40.”

“Hey. I don’t have a baby face.”

Just then Darren passes by, a fresh gallon of eggnog in his hands. Currently unspiked. Chord’s running low, so he hopes that Darren’s on his way to remedy that.

“Who has a baby face?” Darren asks, interjecting himself into the conversation. He’s got pointy elf ears and a bright green sweatshirt—oddly enough, he doesn’t look all that different from what he looks like on a daily basis. Chord resists the urge of telling him so.

“Chord,” Cory says, pointing a finger straight at his forehead. That asshole.

Chord pushes his hand away again. “I don’t have a baby face,” he repeats, feeling indignantly stubborn. Maybe it’s because ‘baby face’ isn’t exactly a compliment. Who wants to look like a toddler?

“You kind of do.” Darren gives a little apologetic shrug. “That’s a good thing, though, right? Your career’s guaranteed to last longer.” He pauses thoughtfully. “People used to tell me I had a baby face, but then I grew a beard.”

“I can’t grow a beard,” Chord admits, and both Darren and Cory burst out laughing. “Shut up. Shut up! It’s genetics, man. Don’t knock my DNA.”

“I wouldn’t knock your DNA,” Darren says, giving him an exaggerated once-over. He winks. “You have good DNA.”

Chord snorts and stares into his now-empty cup. “I need a refill,” he says, though he probably doesn’t; he already feels a little warm under his sweater.

But Darren holds up the eggnog like his life depends on this duty. “I’m on it,” he says, and he bustles over to the bowl in the opposite corner of the room, snagging a bottle of rum as he goes.

Cory takes another drink. “Nice sweater,” he comments casually, poking Rudolph’s face. “Is his nose detachable?”

 

They have three days straight of filming with little downtime in between, but instead of feeling exhausted at the crux of day three, Chord is weirdly energetic. He’s wired. He feels like he could run a marathon, and he can tell, just by looking at the others, that everyone else feels the same way. Maybe it’s because they’re nailing scenes in a way that they haven’t really done before. Maybe it’s because even Ryan is joking around in between takes. Or maybe it’s just because they have a break from filming after this, five whole days to do absolutely whatever they want.

“I think I’m gonna go surfing,” Harry says, dropping down next to Chord with some fruit and a water bottle. “I’m pretty sure I could do with an entire weekend of being a beach bum.”

“Yeah, that does sound good,” Chord says, stretching his legs out and rolling his shoulders. “But I kind of want to _do_ something.”

“Yeah.” Harry takes a bite out of his apple and then calls across the room, “Yo, D. Criss, what are _you_ doing this weekend?”

Darren’s face all but lights up. He has that way about him, always looking excited about even the most inane questions. He jogs over to the pair of them and says, all eager, “Coachella, man! My brother’s band is playing, but I wanna stay for everything. What about you guys?”

Harry’s looking at Chord. “We’re not sure,” he says, but there’s a glint in his eyes, and Chord’s pretty sure he knows what he’s thinking.

Darren doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even act like he’s going to; he doesn’t play that game that most dudes play, where blatantly showing enthusiasm is a weakness. Chord’s noticed that he does a lot of things that most dudes don’t do. “Come with me! Seriously, come with me. I can get you guys tickets. We could ride out there together. You guys can even share my tent.”

Chord considers. Out of all viable options for the weekend, hanging out with Darren Criss had never really been one of them. It’s not the worst idea in the world. It’s just that Darren is not his favorite person. Darren’s not even his favorite castmate, if he’s being honest. He’s _different._ Chord feels like he has to watch what he’s saying around him more than, say, Cory or Mark. He feels like he has to work at their interactions, which is weird. He hasn’t felt like he had to _work_ for someone to like him since the girl he was in love with when he was sixteen, and he’d never wanted to repeat that.

“I’m in,” Harry says, shaking him out of his thoughts, and then he reaches over and slaps Chord’s thigh. “You?”

 

So that’s how Chord ends up riding shotgun towards Indio, California, the windows down, the music cranked up. It’s three o’clock in the morning and there’s hardly anyone on the road. Darren’s in the backseat drumming on the headrests and generally spazzing the fuck out, and Chord has to admit, it’s kind of infectious. Harry’s got one hand on the wheel and the other sifting wind through his fingers, belting out the lyrics to an Oasis song. Chord’s bobbing his head and trying not to grin too widely, because it seems sort of lame to be excited about something that hasn’t even happened yet.

“I love this!” Darren yells over the music. Uninhibited as always.

“Love what?” Harry yells back.

“This! Everything! Roadtrips, Oasis, the California coast at night…”

Chord smirks. Even though right now, and right now only, he actually agrees with Darren, he can’t resist the urge to make fun of him. “And the stars,” he yells, putting his hand over his heart and pretending to flick away a tear. “And the moon!”

Harry jumps in right away, without missing a single beat. “And the construction workers that built this highway!”

“And my mom for giving birth to me!” Chord calls back.

“And this water bottle!”

“And these socks!”

“And that semitruck we passed twenty miles ago!”

From the backseat, Darren cracks up. Chord has to hand it to him; he knows how to take a joke. He wraps one arm around the both of them, careful placement on Harry’s shoulder, slung unabashedly over Chord’s, and he joins in himself, craning his face towards the roof of the car and yelling, “And you guys!” and even though it’s supposed to be funny, even though they’re all kidding around, it feels real. It feels real and Chord feels it too: a complete companionship between these two other guys, a total sense of camaraderie. He feels happy, right down to the pit of his stomach, and he can’t remember the last time he was this happy about something so simple. It’s good. It’s really good.

“And you guys,” Darren repeats, softer this time, giving them each a little squeeze before letting go, and none of them say anything along the expanse of highway for the next ten miles, just listen contently as _Wonderwall_ fills the car.

 

When they arrive at their destination it’s still ass-o’clock, but Darren nearly trips over himself scrambling out of the car, and Harry and Chord are quick to follow. There’s already a mass of people standing around, half-naked, nursing bottles of beers and waters, talking music and complaining about being awake at the buttcrack of dawn. Darren and Harry fit right in, meld in with the crowd almost effortlessly, but Chord feels a little like an outsider. He feels a lot like an outsider when Darren strips his shirt off and lets out a noise that’s probably only half-human, half-ape, and then digs in his backpack and rummages around for what appears to be a set of body paints.

“Do me,” he says, thrusting them towards Chord.

Chord stares at him.

“Excuse me?”

“I need somebody to do me! Don’t worry, I have enough for you guys, too.”

Chord shakes his head. He’s shaking his head without even realizing he’s shaking his head; the impulse to say no to things he’s never done before is instinctual, something he’s done since he was a child. No, he doesn’t want to try raw octopus. No, he doesn’t want to go to a drag show. And no, he definitely doesn’t want to paint his body in bright colors where everybody and their mother can see him.

Darren huffs out an exasperated breath and rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says, “you don’t have to wear them. At least do my back, will you?”

And Chord can’t really find a reason to say no to that, so he takes the paint and a sponge from Darren and Darren turns around, tilts his neck forward, exposing his back to both the rising sun and Chord’s jurisdiction.

“What, like, am I supposed to paint?” he asks, feeling clumsy and bewildered. Not a good combination.

“Anything. Random designs. Rainbows. Splotches of color. Whatever.”

Chord’s definitely not painting a _rainbow_ onto Darren’s back. He glances around at everyone else for inspiration—one guy’s painted head to toe in bright green paint, and Chord can’t help but think that’s going to be mighty uncomfortable five hours from now—and then dips the sponge into the jar of sky blue. “You can’t blame me if it sucks,” he says, just as a disclaimer, and then he timidly presses the sponge against Darren’s skin.

Darren, in turn, shivers, and then laughs at himself for doing so. “It’s cold. And you don’t have to treat me like I’m a Picasso painting, Chord. Just go for it.”

Chord’s not really a _just go for it_ kind of guy, though, so he hesitates for a second and then draws a line. And then another line. And then he switches colors and draws another line in red. He makes a V shape along Darren’s back, but it still looks pretty plain, so he adds a splash of color below his right shoulderblade, and then some more lines just above his waist. “There,” he says, oddly proud of his work. “All done.”

Trying to see for himself, Darren cranes his neck over his shoulder and turns in a circle, and he looks so much like a dog chasing his own tail that Chord has to snort. Darren must realize he looks pretty stupid because he gives that up and laughs shortly after. “I’ll just trust you, I guess. Now give me that, I need to do my front.”

Chord passes the paints over and heads off towards the rows of tents, the people who’ve been camping out for days.

“Hey, where are you going?” Darren calls at his back.

He doesn’t even pause. “I’m gonna bum a beer off someone. Let’s hope someone here watches Glee.”

“If they don’t, just take your shirt off. I’m sure you’ll get the same results.”

Chord rolls his eyes—it’s not a bad strategy, though; there’s a group of girls around a plastic cooler that’ve been eyeing him since he stepped out of the car, and he turns the charm on full blast, because he’s pretty sure he’s going to need some alcohol in his system to make it through the day.

 

Darren bounds up towards him around noon, and it’s been over three hours since they separated, but he looks as perky and refreshed as ever. “This is awesome, isn’t it?” he says happily, and Chord can smell the faint trace of beer on his breath. “So many good bands. Hey, how does my body look?”

Chord looks at him and shrugs. “About the same as ever?”

“Take a picture for me! I want to send it to some people.” Darren pushes his phone into Chord’s hands—he’s always doing that, handing things over without giving Chord the chance to say no first. Chord has an iPhone himself so he knows how to handle it, knows how the camera works, but he still feels a little weird taking a picturing of a half-naked Darren Criss in the middle of the day.

He does it anyway, though.

Harry’s hovering around, loops an arm around Chord’s shoulders when he’s finished and gives him a little shake. “I didn’t know we were having a photoshoot, I would’ve worn something a little nicer.”

“No need,” Darren says, and then he takes a picture of the two of them. He flashes a big, toothy grin. “You look great. Okay, Chord, your turn. Pose.”

If Darren was told to pose, he probably would’ve done something outrageous and ridiculous. Like a somersault in midair. Chord just adjusts the ballcap on his head and throws his hands out to his sides.

Darren’s smile softens a little bit, and he snaps the picture and tucks the phone back into his pocket. “Very nice,” he says, and he pats Chord on the arm. “Hey, I’m gonna go hang out with my brother for a bit. Wanna come?”

 _Meet the family already?_ Chord wants to joke, but doesn’t. Even if he currently feels warmer towards Darren than he ever has, he still doesn’t think they’re those kind of friends.

“Nah, I’m good. I’m gonna see who’s playing.”

“Okay, cool. Meet up with you later?”

“Yeah, definitely. You’ve got my number.” Chord can’t help it; he grins. “If I remember correctly, you stole it from Chris.”

Darren just shrugs innocently. “Not my finest moment, I’ll admit. Okay. I’ll see you later.”

And then he’s off, darting through the crowd, weaving through groups of unashamed hipsters, looking just like he was born to belong.

 

They don’t reconvene until nighttime. By that point, Chord’s lost track of how many beers he’s had. He just drinks them as they’re handed to him; it’s been a long time since he’s been properly drunk, and he almost forgot how good a buzz feels. A buzz feels even better when there’s good music, and good food, and good people—some girls were a little grabby earlier, but otherwise no one’s even called him Sam all day.

Darren brought a tent along. Chord thinks that’s kind of stupid, when they have enough money and enough notoriety to get any hotel suite they could want, but he insists that it’s part of the experience, that they _have_ to do it. That otherwise they’ll just be posers.

(Chord already feels like a poser. The first ten concerts he ever went to were country—the people here look as though they’ve never even heard of Garth Brooks.)

Chord’s feeling nice and amiable as he makes his way back to the tent, though. He’s got a fresh beer in hand, miraculously still cold, and he sits spread-legged just outside the flaps as he waits for Darren and Harry to return, because it feels a little too weird to sit inside the tent by himself. He chats with the neighbors; they talk like they’re old friends, all “how’s the landscaping over there?” and “you guys have enough pillows?” He decides, maybe a little drunkenly, that this is one of the best days he’s ever had. And he was _asked_ to be there. He was wanted. He doesn’t feel like he’s sitting in the warm glow of Darren Criss’s limelight.

And that is a pretty cool feeling.

Darren finally stumbles back a short while after midnight. By this point, he’s lost not only his shirt but one of his sandals too. And his face is red and he’s laughing, and maybe he’s drunk, or maybe he’s just happy. Chord’s not sure he knows the difference.

“Hey!” he says, collapsing on the ground next to Chord. He presses the crown of his head against Chord’s leg, sort of bent over at his waist, limbs flopping to the grass. “Harry met someone. Harry met a girl. Harry will not be back to the tent tonight.”

Chord laughs. “Good for Harry.”

“Yeah,” Darren agrees, looking both thoughtful and fuzzy-brained. “Good for Harry. Coachella, my friend, is all about love.”

“If that’s true, then why are we both sitting here?” Chord asks, taking another sip of his beer. There had been a lot of cute girls today. A lot of them. A handful of which had invited him back to their various tents—but here he was. Alone. With Darren.

Darren looks at him very seriously. “Because we,” he says, “are virtuous young men.”

Chord cracks up so abruptly that he knocks over his can. He doesn’t bother picking it up; it was probably well past time for him to quit drinking, anyway.

“I’m serious!” Darren insists, but then he starts laughing too. He headbutts Chord’s leg playfully. “You are, anyway. You’re a good Southern boy. The jury’s still out on me.”

“I’m going to bed,” Chord says, shaking his head. He’s pretty sure they’ll be woken up in five-point-two hours by rowdy drunkass strangers, and he wants at least a little beauty rest before that happens. “Can I borrow your toothpaste?”

“Sure. Front pocket of my backpack. I’m gonna have another beer.”

Chord can hear Darren chat with the guys in the next tent over as he brushes his teeth and rinses his mouth out with a water bottle he steals from Harry’s bag, and he pokes his head out of the tent to spit and Darren stops talking and looks at him, just looks at him, and grins. Chord wipes the foam off his mouth and grins back, calls goodnight to the neighbors, and then crawls back inside. It’s too hot to even consider climbing into his sleeping bag, so instead he lays on top of it, laces his fingers behind his head, stares at the canvas ceiling of the tent. He’s always been an outdoors guy, loves camping, loves sleeping outside, but this is different. In a good way. He doesn’t feel like he’s out amongst nature. He feels like he’s out amongst _friends._

Darren comes back in a few minutes later, zips the tent up behind him. He acts like he’s trying to keep silent, but he knocks over his backpack, and then he apparently fumbles into his sleeping bag, because he lets out a soft _“shit,”_ followed by a laugh. After a moment of struggling he quiets down. Chord can hear him breathing.

“Hey, Chord? You awake, buddy?”

Chord turns over. It’s dark inside the tent, but he can just make out Darren’s form, only a few inches away. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“Are you drunk?”

A pause. Chord considers—considers his head, his stomach, the way his lips feel pleasantly tingly. “A little, yeah.”

“Me too.”

He doesn’t really know what to say to that other than “hmm,” so he scratches his chest through his tshirt and lays there, wishing he’d brought a more comfortable pair of shorts to sleep in.

“I’m glad you came,” Darren says, because he’s apparently not done, and he sounds so stinking earnest. “I think you’re a great guy. Can I be honest? For awhile there, I didn’t think you really liked me.”

Chord licks his lips sort of nervously. “Can I be honest?’ he says in reply, because Chord Overstreet is a lot of things, but he’s not a fake. “For awhile there, I _didn’t_ like you.”

Anyone else probably would’ve been insulted, definitely would’ve asked why. Darren, though, he just turns over on his side, props his head up with his elbow, and says, “But you do now?”

That’s a loaded question. This weekend? Yeah, Chord likes Darren this weekend—he likes him for bringing him out here, for asking him to come, for sharing his one and only pack of pretzels because Chord had forgotten to bring a snack for himself. Chord even likes Darren _right now_ , in this tent, a little drunk, but sleeping with his ass pressed against the side of the canvas to give Chord more room. But overall? Chord takes a moment to think.

“Yeah,” he says finally, nodding into the darkness. “Yeah, I do.”

Because it’s impossible not to.

That’s the sad truth of the statement: Darren Criss, that asshole, is impossible to dislike.

“Good.” Darren claps him lightly on the shoulder; instead of pulling away immediately, though, his hand rests there, his palm flat against the fabric of his shirt. Chord grins for no real reason whatsoever, and then he remembers that it’s probably weird to grin about nothing, so he stops grinning and subtly shakes Darren’s hand away.

“Night Chord,” Darren murmurs, burying his face into his arms. Somehow, he falls asleep almost instantaneously, taking steady breaths in through his nose, out through his mouth, and Chord rolls onto his back and counts his breaths, letting the sound of Darren sleeping lull himself to sleep.

 

Chord doesn’t know what time it is. It’s still dark, near pitch black inside the tent, and he’s still on top of his sleeping bag, but it’s both cooler and warmer than it was when he first went to sleep. Cooler because the temperature has dropped. Warmer because there’s a body pressed against his from behind.

He freezes. It takes him a long moment to remember where he is, how he ended up here. Darren’s still asleep, blowing tiny puffs of air against the sensitive skin of his neck. He must’ve rolled over in his sleep, and he’s got his hand splayed against Chord’s back, his toes pressed up against his ankle. This, Chord thinks, is definitely not normal.

It feels kind of—kind of good in the way that curling up against someone always does, but it’s _Darren._ Who is a dude. Who is a shirtless dude covered in rainbow-colored paints, who has had a few too many beers before bed. Chord swallows thickly and gives his shoulder a little shake. Darren doesn’t budge.

“Darren,” he whispers, but it comes out a little rough, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Darren. Dude.”

A second later Darren blinks awake, squinting into the darkness. He looks as confused as Chord feels. And then he apparently realizes how close they are, how his own sleeping bag is three feet to the left, and he slowly pulls his toes away, stops touching Chord’s back. “Sorry,” he whispers, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s cool. Seriously, it’s cool.”

Darren’s still looking at him, in a weird way. Like he’s never really seen him before. Without saying another word, he scoots back again, putting a good amount of space between them. He licks his lips. “Sorry,” he repeats.

What Chord doesn’t say is that he kind of wishes they would’ve gone for the hotel room, that this never would’ve happened there. That he should’ve stopped drinking long before sundown because he still feels a little drunk.

What he does say is, “No, man, it’s cool.”

Apparently _cool_ is the only word in his vocabulary right now.

Chord wants to go back to sleep, but his brain’s working too fast and his mouth is way too dry. He sits up, purposely not looking at Darren, and rummages around in the dark for Harry’s water bottle. A cold chill runs along his spine that has nothing to do with the dropping temperature, and he takes a swig and then pours some water into his hand to splash against his face. When he’s done, and he can’t find any other excuses to stay up, he climbs back on top of his sleeping bag, staring at the wall of the tent, away from Darren. It’s silent between them, but Chord can hear Darren’s irregular breathing, which is how he knows that he’s not the only one awake.

A minute later, Chord hears the quiet rustle of nylon, and then faintly, so faint he’s half-convinced he’s imagining it, Darren’s pressing his hand against Chord’s shoulder again, his fingers curling around his bicep. Tentatively, like he’s waiting to be shaken off.

Chord should shake him off, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t know what Darren’s doing, but when he turns his head over his neck to look, Darren’s sitting up a little, and moving forward, and he’s still looking at him in that strange, serious way, and then his hand is moving lower, gliding across the sleeve of his tshirt, and then touching the bare skin of his arm, and then stopping short just above his elbow.

Chord’s breath hitches in his throat.

He could put a stop this, he _knows_ he could, but he doesn’t. It’s maybe the beer or the atmosphere or Darren’s fingernails trailing across the crook of his elbow, but whatever it is, it impairs Chord’s thinking. It makes everything fuzzy around the edges.

And then Darren’s leaning in.

He doesn’t kiss him. Chord’s terrified that he’s going to kiss him, but he doesn’t do it. Instead he presses up against him, chest to back, shin to calf, and then Chord can feel his warm breath against his ear, and he feels like he’s shaking a little, but he isn’t. His insides are shaking which shouldn’t even make sense, but then—none of this makes sense. Darren props his chin against Chord’s shoulder and he whispers, low, “Is this okay?”

 _No_ Chord wants to say, but that’d be lying. So he lets out a little noise that’s more yes than no, that’s more _go ahead_ than stop, that maybe makes it look like Chord has a single fucking clue of what he’s doing.

Darren’s lips press against the back of Chord’s neck and Chord’s heart is racing, so fast he thinks he can feel it lodging up in his throat, and Darren’s hand drops down to his chest, and he rubs at it lightly through his shirt, and they just lay like that for a minute, Darren’s fingers dragging slowly across his stomach, pressing closed-mouthed kisses against the patch of skin where his shoulder meets his neck. Darren’s hand dips lower and Chord holds his breath, because he’s half-hard already, and he can’t screw his eyes shut and will it away because screwing his eyes shut just enhances his other senses, namely his sense of touch, his sense of Darren’s fingers _dipping into the waistband of his shorts._

Chord’s hips rise to meet Darren’s hand without his brain’s approval. Darren’s hand is steady, confident, like he knows what he’s doing. He reaches into Chord’s boxers, wraps his hand around him, and Chord’s breath catches and everything goes strangely warm. He’s been so busy working lately that he hasn’t had a decent handjob in forever, and he really hadn’t thought the one to break his streak would be here of all places, now of all times, with Darren Criss. Of all people.

And Darren’s good at this too, a little sloppy but almost perfectly sloppy, like maybe he’s had a little practice, or maybe he hasn’t and he’s just eager. His free hand pushes Chord’s shirt up mid-chest and his knee urges Chord’s legs apart, and tents are most definitely not soundproof and the guys next door are still partying on so Chord takes careful measures not to moan out loud, bites down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, breathes out sharply when Darren flicks his wrist in a way that Chord once thought only girls knew how to do, like it was innate for them or something.

He’s not going to last long—and he starts to tell Darren so, because it’s common courtesy and all that, but Darren cuts him off before he can even get through _hey, I’m—_ and he scrapes his teeth against Chord’s neck, bites down a little before sucking hard against his skin, quickening the pace of his hand, steady, consistent strokes, and Chord can’t help it: a quiet groan escapes from the back of his throat, and he sort of shifts forward against Darren’s fingers before he comes, all limbless and spent right after, Darren chuckling softly against his back and withdrawing his hand from his shorts.

Chord tries to focus on getting his breathing to return to normal, and not the fact that he’d just fooled around with a guy that a week ago he hadn’t even really liked.

When he glances over his shoulder, Darren’s half-sitting up, wiping his hand off on a spare napkin, and Chord wonders vaguely if he’s supposed to volunteer to return the favor. He’s not going to. He is most definitely not going to.

Darren catches him looking, though, and grins. Even in the dark Chord can see his expression, and he feels a sudden well of anger because he looks—he looks _smug_ or something, or maybe just pleased, but either way, he should know that there’s nothing to grin about right now.

“How much more clichéd could we be?” Darren says quietly, but even still it sounds like his voice is carrying, like everyone in a fifty mile radius is going to be able to hear him, and Chord winces slightly. “I mean, a tent at night—talk about Brokeback Mountain ripoffs.”

Chord’s insides turn to ice. He hadn’t seen Brokeback Mountain. In fact, he and his friends back home had spent an inordinate amount of time making fun of Brokeback Mountain, because the simple truth of the matter was that it was—well, it was _gay._

He doesn’t say anything. Even in the afterglow of an orgasm he still feels pretty shitty, and he doesn’t trust himself with words right now. He doesn’t want to think about this. He doesn’t want to process it. Instead, he adjusts himself inside his shorts, curls back up on top of his sleeping bag, and hopes to God he falls asleep before Darren tries to talk to him—or touch him—again.

 

He rises with the sun. The tent has a little mesh window that they’d forgotten to zip shut last night, and Chord blinks awake when a beam of light hits him straight across his face. For a moment, and just a moment, he’s happy. It’s warm and he doesn’t have to be at work and his body feels strangely good—and then he remembers. He remembers _why_ he feels good, and when he rolls over, Darren’s still fast asleep, a smeared stripe of red paint running carelessly over his eye and into his messy, curly hairline. The nausea hits fast and unexpectedly, and Chord stumbles out of his sleeping bag and out of the tent as quietly as he can, and he bends over at a tree and retches a little, but he doesn’t actually throw up.

Only a few people are up and about this morning, because it’s not the first day of Coachella and therefore not nearly as exciting, and there are shower stalls set up at the opposite side of camp that few dudes seem to be taking advantage of. Chord reaches one-handedly back into the tent and grabs his backpack, then hightails it over. He sincerely hopes to God that there are no paparazzi lurking inside, because the last thing he needs right now is a picture of his bare ass to leak online.

Inside, he turns the water up as hot as he can stand it, and then he stands under the stream and lets it pound against his body until his skin feels raw. He only thinks about physical, tangible things. The slight ache in his chest. The splotch of green paint on his hip. ( _How’d that get there?_ —and then, _oh._ ) The vague chattering of the guys right outside.

When he feels clean—clean enough, anyway—he turns the shower off and pulls on fresh clothes, clean boxers, and then he stops in front of one of the dingy mirrors to mess with his hair, and that’s when he sees it. The side of his neck. A fresh bruise. Mouth-shaped.

Darren had given him a fucking _hickey._

He feels a little sick again and turns away, letting his hair go wild because that doesn’t even matter anymore, and he grabs his shit and leaves the shower stall. Except that once outside he doesn’t know where to go.

There’s a group of girls heading into the women’s showers, not fifty feet away, and they’ve got little bags with them, probably their hairspray or their eyeliner or whatever it is women lug around all day. Chord makes a snap decision; he takes in a big, calming breath and then approaches them, clearing his throat.

“Excuse me,” he says to one girl in particular—she’s around the same age as him, and pretty, and she’s got a really nice smile. She stops and looks at him and her jaw drops open a little, but she catches herself in time. “I’m Chord—”

“I know who you are,” she says, and giggles. “I’m Jess.”

“Hi.”

The other girls disappear into the bathroom and then it’s just the two of them. He works up the balls, because this, he thinks, is better than the alternative. “Okay, this is kind of embarrassing, but I was wondering if you could—if you might be able to—” He turns his head to the side and gestures vaguely at the hickey. She smiles her nice smile.

“Not a problem,” she says, without asking for further explanation, and Chord is immeasurably grateful. “Just let me grab some concealer. I’ll be right back.”

The concealer run takes all of five seconds; in no time flat she’s back, cupping his face in her hands and then tipping his head backwards for easier access to his neck. “This might rub off easily,” she says, poking her tongue into her cheek as she dabs the makeup on the spot. “Or you might sweat it off, since it’s so hot outside. Who are you trying to hide this from, anyway?”

Chord grimaces a little. “The world.”

“Fair enough.”

She blends it in carefully, and then hands him a compact mirror to check for himself. He tilts it up and glances at his reflection. He can’t even see the hickey, so that’s good. Better than good. “God, you’re a lifesaver,” he says, handing the mirror back. “Seriously, thank you so much.”

“No problem. We’ve all been there.” She grins at him once more then jerks a thumb towards the stalls. “I should go get ready, though. Good luck with the you-know-what on your you-know-where.”

He laughs, and it feels so fucking good to laugh. This morning it’d almost felt like he’d lost the muscle that allowed it. “Thanks again. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Maybe you won’t,” Jess teases, and then she shrugs. “It’s Coachella. There are a lot of people out there. Bye, Chord.”

“Bye,” he echoes back, but she’s already gone.

Chord marches back across the field in the direction of their tent, but he takes a fork about halfway there and walks aimlessly to the left. And then aimlessly to the right. And then aimlessly straight ahead. He has no idea what to do, where to go, and the only thing he’s sure of is that he’s going to be avoiding Darren for the rest of the day at all possible costs.

 

He finds Harry around ten. The girl he’d assumedly ditched them for overnight is nowhere to be seen, but he does seem extra jovial today, and his hair is a little crazy. “Chordo!” he shouts, draping an arm around his shoulders. Chord’s stomach knots, but Harry doesn’t say anything about the hickey or ask if on the off chance he might’ve possibly gotten a handjob from Darren Criss last night, so he’s relieved. “What’s going on, dude? Mark’s here. Cory too, I think, but I haven’t seen him yet. Have you eaten? Want to split some pizza with me? Where’s Darren?”

Chord sets his jaw firmly. “Pizza sounds good,” he says, shaking Harry’s arm off and ignoring the last question in the set. “I’ll text Mark, see if wants to join us.”

Incidentally, Mark does want to join them—he’s usually good for anything that involves food. He’s also taking off early today, has a night gig in LA for some advertising agency or another, and he invites the guys to hitch a ride back with him. Chord immediately accepts.

He doesn’t want to, but he figures he owes it to Darren to at least send him a text and let him know, so even though he puts it off as long as possible, he finally digs his phone out of his pocket once he’s riding shotgun in Mark’s old car. _I’m riding back to LA w/ Mark,_ he writes, and his thumb hesitates over the send button for a long time before he bites the bullet and does it.

Darren texts back within two minutes. _oh, okay… i'll see you around then?_

Chord doesn’t answer. He doesn’t feel the need to.

(When Marks asks him halfway there if he’s feeling alright, “cause you’re freaking me out with the Rain Man stare, dude,” Chord just sort grunts and goes back to gazing out the window. He imagines himself trying to explain this to Mark, trying to find the words to make this sound anything less than absolutely ridiculous, but it’s impossible. It’s not going to happen. And _that_ —that thing, that thing that happened, that will most definitely never happen again. Ever.)

 

“Who the hell attacked your neck with their fangs?” his sister demands first thing, and Chord groans and covers it with his hand, because it wasn’t like he had concealer lying around his apartment to hide it for himself. He knew she’d give him a hard time about it, but who else could he have gone to? Lea? Heather? Right, like they wouldn’t have wanted the whole story, like they wouldn’t have been annoyingly persistent about narrowing the culprit down.

“Just someone,” Chord murmurs, sliding in through her front door. “Are you going to help me or not?”

 

He manages to avoid seeing or talking to Darren for an entire six days, which is a pretty impressive feat, considering. Chord spent the rest of his mini-vacation hiding out in his apartment, not showering, eating very little, and playing entirely too much Halo. When shooting restarts, Darren’s back at the Dalton set, so it’s pretty easy to stay out of his way. Not to mention the five texts and two phone calls he ignores.

But his luck can’t carry him through forever. Just around sunset on a Thursday, when he’s already stripped off his shirt and picked up a takeout menu, browsing for something quick and easy he can stomach, someone knocks at his door. He doesn’t get a lot of visitors, but sometimes his siblings do drop by unannounced, so he doesn’t really think about it as he meanders over and opens the door.

It takes him a minute to register what he’s seeing. Darren Criss is standing on his doorstep, holding a cardboard box of pizza.

“Hey,” Darren says, all bright and friendly and not as if Chord had been disregarding his existence for almost the past week. “Have you eaten? I picked this up at Donny’s Pizzeria along the way, I hear they’re really good. Donny was nice, anyway. He was the one taking money, can you believe that? Although—” A thoughtful pause, and then a look of dawning comprehension hits his face, and it’s almost comical, almost funny, except Chord’s tongue feels too big for his mouth and he can’t speak, let alone laugh. “—I guess it’s possible there’s more than one guy named Donny that works there. It’s not exactly an uncommon name. It’s not like going through a drive-through and a guy named Arby takes your order.”

He stops and takes a breath. Chord still hasn’t said a word.

“I’m sorry, I’m talking a lot. I know I am. I just—I rehearsed what I was going to say on the way over, but as soon as you opened the door I sort of forgot everything, and—can I come inside?”

Chord’s half-tempted to close the door in his face, but his mother taught him better than that, and so, his feet feeling strangely heavy, he moves aside and lets Darren through.

“Thanks,” Darren says, and he sets the pizza down on the coffee table in the living room and then turns to look at Chord. “I hope you like mushrooms. Hey, so, we should talk.”

Straight to the point. Chord stares at him. He really wishes he’d put on a shirt; he sort of crosses his arms over his chest and he doesn’t want to talk about this, can’t Darren tell? He’s done all he could to not even _think_ about it and then Darren shows up at his apartment and brings it up like it was nothing.

Chord swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m not gay,” he says, which is the most precise summation he can come up with, the thing that’s been on the tip of his tongue for six days straight.

And then he can’t even believe it. Darren _laughs._

“Cool,” he says, as if Chord had just mentioned his favorite color was green, or that he had a penchant for wearing shoes without socks. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me? Because I kind of already knew that.”

Chord goes back to staring at him. If he knew, then why—he’d been mentally preparing excuses for days, anything that could explain why he reacted the way he did, why he hadn’t immediately shoved Darren away: the alcohol, the darkness, the fact that he’d been more than half-asleep.

But Darren, of course, was as ready to accept the simple explanation as ever. No clarification needed.

“Look,” Darren says, and he takes a step towards Chord.

Chord, in return, takes a big step away.

Darren pretends not to notice. “I’m not either. Not… not exclusively anyway, you know? You don’t have to be one thing or another. We’re just people. And we’d drank and we were stressed out from work, and I wanted to do it, and I felt like—like maybe you’d been giving me a signal that you wanted me to do it too.” Chord opens his mouth to argue, but Darren’s quick to jump back in. “Or maybe you weren’t! I misinterpret stuff sometimes, I know I do. And if you tell me to back off, I will. Or if you tell me—” He catches the way Chord’s looking at him and rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. Backing off. I’ll never bring it up again if that’s what you want. The ball’s entirely in your court. But I hope we’re still cool, man, because I like hanging out with you.”

A silence hangs between them. Darren’s apparently done with his spiel, and Chord sits down heavily on the couch because he feels like his legs might give out.

“The not bringing it up thing,” Chord says, and his voice is rough, like he hadn’t properly used it in a few days. (Weird how easy it was to go without social interaction. Weird how two weeks ago he hated spending more than a single night alone.) “Let’s… yeah, let’s go with that. And the… the, you know, no repeat incidents.”

Darren holds up his left hand, like he’s taking an oath. “I solemnly swear to keep my hands to myself,” he says seriously, and then allows himself the shadow of a grin. He looks at Chord half-doubtfully, almost as if he’s afraid to get his hopes up. “Are we cool?”

Chord has about three thousand reasons to say no, but they all sound pretty stupid in his head. “Yeah,” he says finally, and Darren bumps his fist, practically melting with relief. “We’re cool.”

“Sweet.” Darren drops down beside him on the couch, his own cushion, keeps his distance, but not in a weird, noticeable way. Just two dudes sharing a sofa.

“Now,” Darren says, “what do you say we bust out this pizza and I’ll kick your ass in Halo?”

Chord laughs quietly and flips open the lid. “You wish,” he says, and it’s almost like things are back to normal, like nothing ever happened.

 

The last month of filming passes by entirely too quickly. Chord spends a lot of time hanging out with his castmates— _all_ of them. There are no Others. There are no divides. They’re a family, simple as that. The last few days are totally bittersweet. On one hand, they’re proud of how much work they’ve done, of how far they’ve gotten, what they’ve accomplished. They’re ready for tour, ready to travel the country, new cities every night. But they have to say a temporary goodbye to a lot of awesome crewmembers (Chord knows them all by name, now, and he has no problems approaching them on set) and things will be different on the road than they were in their little Glee bubble in LA. There’s no doubt about that.

Mark and Cory drop by on the last night of shooting with two twelve-packs of beer, and they go through them pretty quickly, talking shit and playing Xbox and stuffing their faces with pretzels and potato chips.

“I’m so ready to hit the road,” Mark says, blowing some dude to smithereens on screen. “Especially when we get to Europe. That’ll be so badass.”

“I didn’t even know people in Europe knew what Glee was,” Cory says, hitting his controller repeatedly. He’s pretty terrible at this game, but not for lack of trying.

The other guys look at him.

“What?” he says defensively, shrugging their gazes away. “I don’t even know any Canadians who watch Glee.”

“That’s because you hang out with the redneck Canadians,” Mark shoots back. “Do you even know anyone up there that owns a TV?”

“Hey, bite me,” Cory says, but he doesn’t deny it.

Chord’s kicking both of their asses at this game. He won’t admit it, but it’s probably because of how much time he’d spent hoarding himself inside his apartment and doing nothing other than getting better at it. He’s not proud. “Do you think we’ll have enough time to go out after shows?” he asks, his tongue poking out in concentration. Mark and Cory, after all, are the seasoned veterans of the Glee Tour Experience. Chord’s just a rookie. “Or is it going to be all work?”

“Depends,” Mark tells him distractedly, scratching himself through his shorts. “On how long we have to get to the next city, or when we have shows, or whatever. You gotta make sure it doesn’t look like you’re a super partier or anything, though.”

“Man, I haven’t even partied in forever.”

“Yeah,” Cory says, “because you spend all your time hanging out with Darren.”

Chord’s spine stiffens. He was pretty sure he was spending an ordinary amount of time with Darren, no more, no less than the other dudes, now that he’d decided it wasn’t worth ignoring him. Since they haven’t even brought up—the incident since that day. He swallows thickly and keeps his gaze focused on the TV screen, because surely they don’t know. They’re just talking smack. Darren wouldn’t have told them. He wasn’t like that.

“What,” Chord says, when he can be sure his voice won’t tremble. “You jealous or something?”

“Of your sweet man-love?” Cory laughs. “You wish.”

“I’m jealous,” Mark throws in, flashing him a sideways smirk. “You know I have a thing for blonds.”

“Keep dreaming.” Chord can breathe a little easier now, now that he knows they’re joking. “Besides, Angelina Jolie and I have a thing going right now, and I’m a one-woman man.”

“One-woman _boy_ ,” Mark corrects him. “You ain’t a man yet, Overstreet. Have you even hit puberty?”

“I think he’s in the middle of it right now,” Cory supplies. “His voice totally cracked in the studio the other day.”

“Keep it up and soon you’ll have chest hair.”

“And don’t worry, just because your body’s changing doesn’t mean—”

Chord interrupts when he’s had enough, laughing, and he throws a pretzel at each of them, hitting them both square in the face. “Fuck off,” he says. “You guys are just jealous because you’re pushing thirty. I’d be mad if I was getting winkles too.”

Mark presses pause on the videogame. He looks at Cory seriously. “Should we kill him?” he asks.

Cory nods. “Totally,” he agrees, and then all at once they’re tackling Chord from each side, pushing his face into the couch cushion, and Mark’s sitting on his head, and Cory’s twisting his arm behind his back, and they’re all cracking up, everything forgotten for as long as it takes them to get Chord to cry uncle.

 

The first night of tour, and Chord’s on the verge of peeing himself.

Not literally. He’s not going to pull a Fergie out there, because he likes to think he has better control of his bladder than that, and also, there’s plenty of time for bathroom breaks. But his palms are sweating. His stomach’s in knots. This, right here, is the kind of thing he’s been dreaming of his entire life. Playing in front of thousands of people. A sold-out arena. Screaming girls with his face on their shirts. His _face._ And thirteen of his best friends to back him up, to stop him from passing out on stage.

They’re all excited. Lea keeps running up and down the steps, like she’s calculating her path, making sure she doesn’t trip. Harry and Mark are doing sit-ups beneath the stage; Chord would probably join them if he didn’t think it’d make him sick.

Darren’s hair is so full of gel that it looks plastered to his head; paired with his ratty tshirt, he looks downright funny. Chord laughs when he walks in through the backstage door, his jacket thrown over one shoulder, his pressed pants dangling from a hanger.

“Shut up,” Darren says, but he’s grinning. “I haven’t gotten into costume yet. I’d like to see you try and sing and dance with this much crap in your hair.”

“I don’t have to,” Chord says, hand reaching up to prod at his frosted tips. “I’m going back to my roots.” He’d had a mishap at the hairdresser’s a few weeks ago, but his hair was now closer to its original color than it had been in months, and it was short, and well-kept. Nothing like the shaggy cut they’d made him keep for homeless Sam Evans, version 2.0.

Darren’s eyes follow his fingers, and they linger there for a second longer than necessary. “Looks good. Your hair, I mean. It suits you.”

Chord’s quiet for a moment. Just because they were back to normal—as normal as they could be—doesn’t mean he’s forgotten. Doesn’t mean the potential for weirdness is gone. Doesn’t mean it’s not pressing at the back of his mind every time he sees Darren, every time they’re in the same proximity.

He clears his throat.

“Thanks,” he says finally. “I’m counting on it to lure the ladies in.”

Darren laughs and punches him lightly in the shoulder. If Chord’s overcompensating, at least he’s willing to play along. “Lure ‘em in with the hair, keep ‘em dangling with the abs. Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to have any problems.”

“I’m thinking I should go for a girlfriend in every city. What do you think?”

“I think you better start saving money. And you better hope none of those 42 girlfriends happen to be friends with each other on Facebook.”

Chord’s stomach unknots itself. He’s grinning now too, a genuine grin. “So are you nervous?”

Darren’s eyebrows make impressive geometric shapes when they go all raised like that. Chord knows he’s not the only one that can’t help but watch them.

“Are you kidding? I almost projectile vomited all over a sound guy earlier.”

That makes Chord feel slightly better, too.

“I’m actually kind of hoping something goes wrong tonight. Just so we can get it out of the way.”

“Who-oa!” Darren actually looks scandalized. He picks up a handtowel from the vanity and throws it right at Chord’s face. Chord’s too surprised to block it in time, catlike reflexes be damned, and it smacks him in the forehead before falling to the floor. “Take your black magic and get out of here, Chord Overstreet. If I forget my words or, I don’t know, the stage bursts into flames tonight, I’m definitely blaming you.”

“You’d blame me for _you_ forgetting your words? Besides, isn’t that kind of a guaranteed thing?”

Darren looks at him. His eyebrows haven’t made any descension yet.

“I’ve seen Youtube videos,” Chord shrugs, the back of his neck feeling strangely warm. “I’ve heard things.”

“Of course you’ve heard things. Who hasn’t heard things?”

Just then, Jenna and Kevin bustle through the door.

“We’re on in ten!” Jenna says excitedly, giving a little twirl before she reaches them. They too have the luxury of not wetting themselves, given that they’ve done this before. That they know how it goes. “Darren, you should probably get dressed. Chord, if you need makeup touches go find Susan.”

Chord glances in the mirror; his stage makeup looks pretty much the same as when it was applied, but he figures better safe than sorry. “Alright,” he says, “I’ll see you guys out there.”

Darren grabs his arm and then looks down, surprised, at his hand, like even he hadn’t known he was going to do that. He quickly lets go. “Good luck tonight, Chord,” he says, and his voice is warmer than usual, maybe driven lower with nerves or—or something else.

“Thanks,” he says back, and he knocks Kevin in the leg as he passes, because he needs some sense of normalcy. Needs to not let the fear creep back up into his windpipe two minutes before they make their debut.

Susan the makeup lady tuts at him when he drops down into her chair. “You’ve nearly sweated everything off,” she says, scolding, brandishing a sponge like a weapon.

But he just sits there, thoughtful and quiet.

“Well,” he says after a second, “can you blame me?”

 

The first show goes so smoothly that Chord halfway thinks he’s dreaming. That he’s going to wake up and it hasn’t actually happened yet, and then he’ll step on stage and trip over the mic stand, and he’ll accidentally elbow Dianna during _Lucky_ , and then he’ll fall on his ass during the grand finale, and it’ll be on TMZ to boot. But no. He remembers all his words, and they’re all on fire, and they all feel freaking amazing once the house lights go down, when the screams and cheers follow them all the way backstage, and they’re hugging and laughing and laughing and hugging, and they’re glowing, all of them. It feels pretty damn good.

They go out for celebratory drinks, but not that many drinks, given that they have to wake up and do it all again tomorrow. The vets buy the rookies shots—Chord, Darren, and Ashley line up and simultaneously throw back kamikazes, and Darren laughs afterwards, and slings his arm around Chord’s shoulders, and Ashley plants a kiss on his cheek, and they tap their beers against the rest of them because they’re officially part of the group now, the group that Chord has felt like he’s belonged to for months.

They stay in amazing, too-expensive hotel suites that night. Chord has a queen size bed with a balcony that overlooks the entire city, and sheets with a threadcount of—well, Amber told him the threadcount, but he’s not even entirely sure what that means. Just that it’s good.

Even though his adrenaline is still pumping he forces himself under the blankets and into those ridiculously high-threadcounted sheets. He spends a long time replaying the events of the night in his head but eventually, eventually, he falls asleep. He dreams about a pair of warm hands reaching around him from behind, warm breath against his neck, quiet moans into his ear.

He wakes up with morning wood and blames it on the sheets.

 

They’re all jazzed about playing the Staples Center. Who wouldn’t be? It’s a huge arena and just in time; they’ve hit their stride, they know how to carefully and successfully tread between doing their jobs and having fun. They’ve started throwing little surprises into the choreography. Each night Chris goes down on his knees in front of Darren and comes up with something more ludicrous than the last. Chord doesn’t watch that part of the show, but Ashley gives him the update every night between sets.

The night before they’re sitting around the banquet hall and eating a complimentary dinner—one of the best parts about the tour, in Chord’s opinion, is the free food, because everyone’s dying to cater for them. Chord overfills his plate with mashed potatoes and chicken and green bean casserole, and then he doubles back and adds a little more. By the time he’s satisfied almost everyone else is seated, and he squeezes in between Amber and Jenna at one of the tables, making himself comfortable.

Lea’s giving an impassioned speech about animal rights or human rights or maybe she’s just talking about Animal Planet, but either way, Chord zones out as soon as he digs into his food. She gives a lot of impassioned speeches. He feels sort of bad about ignoring her, so he resolves to listen twice as hard next time. She already has an enraptured audience anyway. Darren especially keeps nodding his head and saying, “Yeah, yeah. I totally agreee. Completely.”

It’s all very been there, done that-ish. Chord gets tired of activism. Not being active, per se, but hearing about it. He works with a lot of passionate people.

He doesn’t even tune back into the conversation until Amber’s turning towards him and saying, “So, Chord. Are you excited?” and by then it’s too late; he has no idea what they’re talking about, and there’s no way for him to roundaboutly ask without sounding like a jerk.

So he swallows the chicken in his mouth and gives the table at large a sheepish look. “About what?”

Jenna laughs. They’re probably all too used to it now to be offended. “The show! Your parents are coming, right?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, they are.” Chord blots at his mouth with a napkin. “And my brother and a few of my sisters. And some friends from back home, too.”

“What about you, Darren?” Lea says, with a secretive sort of smile. Chord raises an eyebrow. “Are _you_ excited?”

Darren’s got a matching secret smile. Chord feels like he’s on the outside of a very private, very lame inside joke. “I am, Lea.”

“Of course you are.”

“Why so excited?” Amber asks, because no one else was going to, and it’s clear that’s what Lea wants. In fact, she immediately leans in and takes the reigns.

“Because his giiiirlfriend is coming.”

Chord chokes on a bite of mashed potatoes. He wants to blame it on the fact that they’d left the skins in, and not the weirdly inconvenient timing, but either way, he’s coughing up a storm and Jenna’s hammering him on the back until he can breathe normally, and they’re all staring at him with concerned expressions like maybe he’s on his deathbed or something.

Eventually the mashed potatoes unlodge themselves from his throat. (It’s really hard to get mashed potatoes lodged in your throat—he’s grateful that none of them point that out.)

Amber offers him a drink from her water bottle and then resets her sights on Darren. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” she says, and Chord’s secretly thankful that he’s not the only one.

Darren smiles. “I do.”

“How long have you guys been together?”

“About six months now.”

It’s a good thing Chord hadn’t taken another bite. In fact, he’s already sort of choking on air again, but this time he keeps it under wraps. Six months? Six _months_? It’s May, which means April was only a month ago, and April was when—was when—

“I have to go,” Chord says abruptly, before he empties his dinner all over the table in front of them. He doesn’t offer an explanation. He can’t even think of one. Instead, he grabs his plate and tosses it into the trashcan on the way out the door, except once he’s out there he’s not really sure where to go, so he just walks.

Six months.

 

It’s not easy to push that out of his mind, but he does the best he can. Distractions, however temporary, tend to help, and that night he stays in and Skypes every single person he has ever known since kindergarten. He doesn’t think about the fact that Darren had unwittingly forced him into being the—the Other Woman in this fucked up equation, that he’d helped someone cheat. Drunk or not, sleep-addled or not. He’s kind of pissed at Darren all over again, and it feels almost nice, having this fresh wave of anger with actual reason behind it.

A lot of them have friends and family coming to the show, so the next morning they open up one of the little rooms for them to reunite away from the fourteen-year-olds with their flashing cameras, and Chord rockets himself into his mom’s arms when he steps inside, and his whole family’s there, talking a mile a minute, suffocating him with hugs. He’s always been close with his family. Having them here, this collision of worlds, is surreal. But in the best way possible.

There’s a lot of introducing in the room, a lot of “oh, you must be”s and “I’ve heard so much about you!”s. Chord loses track of time, but he’s pretty sure the majority of them are in there for a good two hours, and it’s hard to pull himself away. Hard to push his parents out into the audience, to make sure they’re in their seats with no problems before the show starts. Eventually, though, they get there, with another round of hugs and kisses, and then Chord’s left alone.

When he steps out through the door and turns right down one of the corridors, he realizes that Darren’s family has also departed. But Darren hasn’t. And his girlfriend hasn’t.

Because who else could she be? She’s got long brown hair and beat-up Chucks, and Darren’s hands are splayed open-fingered against her back, and even though they’re in the corner of the hallway, half-shrouded in shadow, Chord can still see them clearly, can see the way Darren leans in and whispers in her ear, the way she laughs before she kisses him.

He immediately turns away.

He didn’t want to see this. Them. He shoves his hands deep inside his pockets and silently walks away before they can spot him, because he doesn’t want to meet her, doesn’t want Darren to play host and try to find something that they can all talk about. Really, though, what he’s walking away from is himself. Because even though he doesn’t want to admit it, even though he hates himself for it, he’d felt a flash of hot emotion when he’d watched her lean in and kiss him, and it wasn’t anger. It had nothing to do with being pissed off at Darren Criss, and everything to do with the reoccuring dream he’d had last night, with wondering for himself what it’d be like to push Darren up against the wall and kiss him breathless.

 

Chord stays with his family at a different hotel that night, because he was pretty sure that he had the sort of luck where he’d end up in the room next to Darren’s and the last thing he wants is to go to sleep to the noise of a bed banging up against the wall—not that he _knows_ that’s what would happen, but because he’s pretty sure that if she’d flown to LA from New York she wasn’t going to go home unsatisfied. This means he has to wake up an hour earlier the next morning, take a quick shower, and then have his mom drop him off at their original hotel, where they’ve already begun boarding the bus for the short drive to the next show. The driver flicks an annoyed glance at him as he climbs on, because he’s the last one to arrive and he’s a few minutes late.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, head down, and then he throws his backpack in front and seeks out an empty seat. Everyone else is already sprawled out, limbs poking out into the aisle, iPod headphones tucked in their ears. He’d rather sit on the opposite side of the bus from Darren—so maybe he’s a five-year-old, but he’s still pissed, and he doesn’t really care—but there’s only one free seat near the front, and it’s right smack dab between Darren and Mark. Suppressing a scowl, he drops down on the cloth seat. Darren’s eyes are closed, so maybe he’ll just sleep the whole way there. Hopefully.

“Yo,” Mark says, leaning over and propping his chin up on the backrest. “How was family time?”

“They made me sleep on the floor,” Chord says, shaking his head. “Can you believe that? I was offering to pay for a second room, but they’re all no, no, save your money, you’re young, you can handle it…”

“Rough, dude. Should’ve stayed with us. Naya snuck a guy in. Amber and I prank called their room all night long.”

Chord laughs. “Did they answer?”

“The first twelve times or so, yeah. We pretended to be confused Japanese businessmen.”

“Terrible,” Chord says. “If I were there, we would’ve had room service sent up. Like, we could’ve asked just for chocolate syrup. And bananas.”

“And cucumbers,” Mark adds, “and whip cream.”

“And handcuffs. Do you think they carry those?”

Mark lifts his eyebrows at him. “I don’t know what kind of room service _you’re_ used to, dude…”

All of a sudden Darren’s leaning forward over the seat, popping one of his earbuds out. “What are you guys talking about?” he asks with a curious grin, and Chord’s insides go a little icy, which is how he knows he’s still mad. He’s still mad and he doesn’t care, and all he wants is for Darren to go back to pretend-sleeping or whatever he was doing.

“Nothing,” Chord says, and he’s surprised at how clipped his voice sounds, how tight his jaw feels.

Darren gives him a look that’s almost—almost hurt, and Mark’s looking at him too because they both know Darren would be an excellent addition to this conversation, but Chord doesn’t care. If it’s petty, then fine, he’s petty. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever been.

“We were talking about ways to terrorize Naya,” Mark supplies for him, and then from the back of the bus comes, “Hey! I heard that!” so Mark laughs and lowers his voice. “Got any contributions?”

Darren looks intrigued. “Well,” he starts to say, but Chord cuts him off, fakes a big old giant yawn right in the middle of his sentence.

“I’m going to take a nap,” he announces, scrunching down in his seat and kicking his legs out into the aisle. “If you guys wouldn’t mind keeping your voices down…”

Now they’re both looking at him oddly, like there’s something wrong with him or something, but he doesn’t care. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls his jacket up over his arms, silently counting down from twenty. At least he hadn’t said something like _wouldn’t you rather talk to your girlfriend, anyway?_ because that would sound jealous, and he _wasn’t_ jealous. He was the farthest thing from it. He was… he didn’t know what he was. But not jealous.

“I guess I should try to nap too,” Darren says, in a polite near-whisper, “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” and Chord almost hates him, thinks, petulantly, of course you didn’t, but doesn’t say anything, just bites down on the inside of his cheek and starts his countdown over, starting from ninety-nine this time.

At right around thirty-six his jaw starts to unclench. He’s starting to think about it logically: there are twelve other people here, besides the two of them, which means it’d be pretty easy to divide his time up evenly. You didn’t have to make room for _everyone_. He’d just… spend his time with other people. Staying busy. Staying distracted.

Tour wouldn’t last forever. Come end of summer, Darren would be back at Dalton. He just had to make it until then.

 

Hanging out with the girls isn’t nearly as much fun as hanging out with the guys. Chord learns that on day one. He’s sprawled out over Ashley’s hotel bed, face buried in the blankets, listening to them talk about clothes. About _clothes._

“Isn’t this a little stereotypical?” he asks, when he pretty much can’t take it anymore. “I mean, what happened to gender equality and not proving those stupid woman magazines right? Don’t you want to prove that you’re more than that?”

“Shut up, Chordy,” Dianna says, turning a stiletto over in her hands. “Trust me, I can still hold my own and kick your ass. And I can look good while I do it.”

“Speaking of your ass,” Jenna adds, “those pants aren’t doing it _any_ favors.”

Chord frowns. “What’s wrong with my pants?”

“Nothing. At least, nothing compared with your shirt.”

Grumbling, Chord presses his face back into the mattress. “You guys suck,” he says. “I’m glad I’m not a girl.”

Dianna slaps him upside the ass so hard he nearly jumps out of his skin. This, he thinks. This is why he needs to go back to being a dude. Kevin had never left him with a welted handprint on his asscheek.

But Darren was hanging out with the dudes. Somehow, he thinks, this is still the better alternative.

 

“You want to—what?” Chris says flatly.

Chord rocks on the balls of his feet. Why did everyone keep using that tone of surprise with him lately? “Hang out with you,” he repeats. “You know, shopping or—or whatever.”

Chris eyes him wearily, like he’s going to whip a mask off and reveal an alien underneath. Chord’s not an alien. He’s just trying to… diversify his interests. That was his new official motto. He thought it sounded pretty good. “You do realize that I don’t only _shop_ on our days off, right,” Chris says, same tone.

“Yeah, no, I know. Whatever. Whatever you do. Can I come with you?”

“I’m going to the bookstore first,” Chris says, still watching him carefully. “I need new reading material.”

Chord’s smile wanes. Just a little bit. “Cool,” he says. “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

“You realize the other guys are going to an arcade, right? So they can shoot things and beat ten-year-olds at racing games?”

“Yeah.” Chord shoves his hands inside his pockets, awkwardly. He tries for a joke. “Sounds kind of lame, right?”

“It sounds completely lame,” Chris agrees. “The kind of lame that you would be completely and wholeheartedly interested in.”

Chord downright frowns now. “I like to read,” he says stubbornly.

“Of course you like to read. I’m not doubting that. Do you like to read more than you like beating Mark at videogames? That, that I doubt.”

“Can I come or not?”

Chris makes a big production of sighing. “Yes, you can come,” he relents, like he’s doing some serious charity work or something. Like he should be awarded for his efforts. “Just try not to destroy anything, okay?”

Chord follows after him, through the hotel lobby and into the sunlit street, scrunching up his nose. “Why does everyone keep telling me that?” he asks, but Chris doesn’t bother with an answer.

 

That night Chord has the dream again. This time they’re trapped in an elevator together, although there’s a loveseat in the corner and Smokey Robinson’s playing through the loud speakers. One second they’re sitting there and the next Chord’s not wearing pants, and—and the dream is a lot more explicit than Chord even wants to think about, and he wakes up sort of horrified the next morning and makes a mental note to start taking the stairs.

 

“Are you going to come drinking with us tonight?” Cory asks, perched in the doorway of his room.

“Us who?”

“I don’t know, does it matter?”

“Kind of.”

“Dude, why?”

Chord stares fixedly down at his laptop. He tries to think of a reason that doesn’t sound ridiculous—or, well, gay. None immediately come to mind. “Naya turns into a mean drunk,” he lies finally, still avoiding eye contact. “Last time she told me I needed a lip reduction or a face enlargement, whichever one was easiest.”

Cory laughs, which isn’t exactly sympathetic. “Wow,” he says. “Well, you don’t have to worry. It’s just me and Mark. I think everyone else is going to some play or something.”

“Okay, yeah. Sounds good. Let me change real quick.”

“Yeah, wear something pretty.” Cory laughs and heads back into the hallway. “Mark’s gonna need a serious wingman tonight.”

 

Chord’s drunk. _Drunk._ He can’t feel his lips, which is like, really drunk, the only kind of drunk that tequila shots can bring on. Cory and Mark are drunk too. They keep laughing about really stupid things. Like the fact that they’d went back to the wrong hotel at first. And then when they’d made it to the _right_ hotel, the receptionist in the lobby had shushed them. She’d actually shushed them.

“What’re they gonna do, kick us out?” Mark asks once they’re safely in the elevator, still laughing. “Pretty sure us just being here is gonna do wonders for their business.”

“Maybe they’ll sell our used tissues once we leave.” Cory’s sitting on the floor, for some inexplicable reason, craning his neck up to look at them. It’s probably the first and last time he’d ever be forced to do that. “Remember how what’s-his-face told us to start throwing water on everything we use with—” He pauses to laugh. “—with bodily fluids, or else they’ll end up on ebay.”

“I wonder how much my boogers would go for,” Mark says. “At least a hundred dollars. Maybe two.”

“Hey guys, remember that girl with—” Chord starts, but he can’t even finish because they all burst into laughter again, and man, Chord feels good.

Because they have shitty timing, or because the universe hates Chord, the elevator doors slide open on their floor just as Darren and Lea are waiting to get on. Of course. They’re wearing pajama pants and Lea’s got her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and Darren’s wearing glasses, and since when does he wear glasses? They don’t look weird on his face, though. They look the opposite of weird. They look—

“Hey guys,” Darren says, eyebrows lifted in amusement. “Good night?”

“The best,” Mark answers, trying to help Cory to his feet. It’s not as easy as it’d look. There’s a whole lot of Cory and not a whole lot of floor. Darren steps in to assist, making sure he’s upright and steady before backing off, but with one hand still raised, like he’s going to catch him if he falls over. Chord scoffs out loud without realizing he’s scoffing.

Darren looks at him, though. “Everything okay, Chordo?”

“No,” Chord says, “shut up. Don’t call me that.”

There’s an awkward silence. Lea looks between them nervously. “Darren and I were going downstairs to get some vitamin water,” she offers into the quiet.

“Of _course_ you are,” Chord says. Vitamin water. They’re probably buying organic kale from a local farmer down there too.

Darren sticks his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, glances around at them all. “Chord, can we talk for a second?” he asks, and Chord might be drunk but he’s not stupid, he knows what _that_ means.

“No,” he says stubbornly. “I have to pee.”

Cory and Mark are sharing a room at the end of the hall but Chord’s is only two doors away, and he hopes Kevin’s not in there because he really does have to take a leak, and then he wants to climb into bed and maybe drunk dial some of the girls who’d rejected him in high school. Or maybe not. As long as it starts with peeing.

“Okay then.” To Darren’s credit, at least he’s not pushing it. “Can you guys all make it into your rooms okay?”

“We’re fine,” Mark says. “See if they have any pretzel-covered chocolate down there, okay?” and he starts laughing yet again.

Chord fumbles into his pocket for his room key, and it takes four attempts to insert it correctly, but at last he gets there and the door pushes open. The lights are off and the beds are empty. Chord sighs happily and nearly trips over his own feet trying to get into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later he’s stripped down to his boxers, laying on top of the blankets and playing Angry Birds on his iPhone. He sucks at it, mostly because the birds keep turning into penguins and he also keeps dropping the phone. He hears the click of the door unlocking, doesn’t glance up, turns his phone upside down like maybe that will help, but then someone clears his throat at the foot of his bed and it’s not Kevin, doesn’t even look like Kevin if he squints. It’s Darren.

“Intruder,” Chord says accusingly. He knew Darren was capable of doing some pretty low things, but breaking and entering? That was just pathetic.

“I borrowed Kevin’s room key,” Darren explains. “To make sure you were okay.”

Chord ignores him. “Hide ya kids, hide ya wives,” he half-sings, still jamming his thumb repeatedly against the screen.

“I brought you some water and Tylenol. Just in case.”

“I’m not wearing pants,” Chord informs him. “Now is not a very good time.”

And Darren—Darren’s eyes actually dip down to his legs and Chord realizes belatedly that drawing attention to—to—anything was a bad idea, and he quickly grabs a pillow and shoves it over his crotch, and Darren lifts an eyebrow at him, again, that stupid eyebrow of his.

“I don’t know why you’re acting weird all of a sudden,” Darren says quietly, and he sets the pills and water bottle down on the nightstand. “I thought we were okay.”

“We are not okay,” Chord says, feeling his stomach unrolling all over itself suddenly. He’s going to be sick. “ _We_ are not anything. Jesus.”

“Look,” Darren says, and he doesn’t even have the excuse of drunkenness to hide behind, “I don’t know if you’re suddenly feeling—”

“Stop. Stop. Stop. I’m gonna throw up.”

Darren doesn’t move.

“No, _seriously._ ” Chord pushes himself up off the bed, shoves past Darren. “I’m actually going to throw up.”

He hits his knees in front of the toilet just in time.

It takes about fifteen minutes to make sure that everything that’s going to come up _has_ come up, and then he rinses his mouth out with tap water and spits about twelve times before he trusts himself to leave. The fun part of being drunk was over. Now came hell.

He expects to be alone when he exits the bathroom, but he’s not. Darren’s sitting on the corner of his bed. His blankets are pulled back, the pillows are fluffed, there’s a trashcan placed strategically beside the mattress, and the cap on the bottle of water is twisted off. He literally could not have tried any harder.

“I’ll let you sleep,” Darren says. “But you should drink that first. I’ve got my phone on. Call me if you need anything.”

And then he leaves.

Chord stares at the door, sort of swaying on his feet before sliding into the pulled-back covers, taking a drink of the already-opened water. Fucking Darren Criss, he thinks. Why did he have to be so fucking nice?

 

Chord feels like shit the next morning. Of course he feels like shit. He makes it down to the continental breakfast for all of two seconds before the smell of greasy bacon hits his nose, and then he’s marching right back upstairs and into the bathroom, cursing the very existence of alcohol and trying to remember just exactly what he’d said and done last night, and why exactly he half-remembered Darren being in his room.

They hadn’t—he hadn’t—

Of course they hadn’t. Chord vaguely remembers telling Darren to shut up. But how had he ended up in his boxers? When exactly had Darren entered the picture?

It’s that thought, and not just the hangover, that gives him the migraine of a lifetime all day long.

 

Darren doesn’t like to be avoided. He remembers that from last time, of course, what with the ice-breaker pizza and the showing up on his doorstep, but it’s actually easier to ignore someone that’s with you all the time, so long as there are plenty of other people with you too. But Darren. Darren is persistent. Determination could be his middle name.

It’s seven o’clock in the morning on their free day when he gets him. Chord had figured no one else would be up and about this early, so he thought he’d help himself to a bagel and some fruit before hitting the city for the day, the one guarantee that he wouldn’t be shoved into a small space with anyone he didn’t want to be shoved into a small space with. He’s sitting two tables over from a couple that look to be pushing eighty, at least, and he’s helping himself to a spoonful of cream cheese icing when someone drops down into the seat next to his.

Darren. Of course.

“Morning,” Darren says. He bites into an apple.

Chord doesn’t say anything. He chews and chews and chews, and then he takes a sip of orange juice. Then he goes back to chewing.

But Darren’s not to be deterred. “Big plans today?” he asks, and when Chord doesn’t answer: “You must have some, if you’re waking up this early.”

Again, Chord says nothing. He keeps his mouth busy so he doesn’t have to. Can’t talk with your mouth full and all that.

“Or,” Darren adds, “you’re waking up this early to avoid me, which seems nonsensical but is actually probably the correct answer. Right?”

Chord looks at Darren with as much feigned interest as he can muster. “I wanted a bagel,” he says. “The blueberry ones are usually gone by eight.”

“Come on, Chord.”

For the first time, Chord can see the hint of frustration in Darren’s eyes. Well good, he thinks. He deserves it.

“At least tell me what you’re upset about,” Darren prompts. Like—like he’s some girl that can be won back with _emotions_ and _talking._ Fuck that. He says nothing.

Darren sighs. “Was it something I said? Did?”

“Are you kidding me, Darren?” Chord says, because—because enough is enough and he can’t control himself, can’t help it. “You want to know why I’m pissed off? Fine. Fine, it’s because you _have a girlfriend_ and you—you—” He can’t bring himself to say it. Even now. He hardly allows himself to _think_ about it. Besides, Grandma and Grandpa over there are probably listening in. Maybe they have Twitter accounts. Maybe they’re paparazzi in disguise. Chord reels himself back in, controls his tempter, counts to three before letting out a slow breath. “You cheated, dude,” he finishes, voice low. “That’s not cool.”

It’s Darren’s turn to be quiet. His hands are folded, his lips pressed tight. Maybe he’d taken a cue from Chord. Maybe he’s counting backwards in his head.

“So that’s what this is about,” he says calmly, eyes flickering to Chord’s. He hesitates, scratches at the skin just below his left ear. “Look, Chord, this probably won’t make sense—”

“Stop,” Chord says, turning back to his breakfast. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“No, please. Hear me out.” Darren licks his lips. Chord doesn’t acknowledge him, but he’s not walking away. That should be some sort of signal.

“She and I have… what you would I guess call an open relationship.”

Chord looks at him. It’s his turn to have his eyebrows raised. Fine, Darren had gotten his attention. He won.

“We’re both artists, you know, we both know how demanding our jobs are… and I guess really we’re each other’s safety nets. We’ve been friends for so long that calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend seemed logical. But we agreed a long time ago that we weren’t exclusive.”

Chord bites down on his bottom lip. He doesn’t know what to say.

“I’m not saying we go around and sleep with anyone and everyone,” Darren adds quickly. “Just that if there’s someone we like, then… we don’t feel guilty about going for it.”

“So does she know?” Chord asks, and his voice sounds rough. “About—”

“About Coachella? Yeah. Not, you know, specifics. Not who it was.”

“That it was—a guy?”

Chord’s near-whispering now. He can’t help it.

“Yeah. Yeah, she knows about that.”

“So I’m not the Other Woman.”

Darren laughs out loud at that, and Chord kind of can’t help it: he feels it too. The tension melting away from his shoulders. The inability to be pissed at Darren Criss. Yet again.

“No,” he says, slapping Chord on the back. “No, you’re not the Other Woman. You’re not a Woman at all.”

“Right, well.” Chord clears his throat, sets the bagel back down on his plate. He’s suddenly not very hungry.

But Darren seems to understand that it’s time for him to leave. “I,” he announces, “am going back to bed. I set my alarm just to beg for your forgiveness, you know.”

Chord snorts, crumples up a napkin.

Darren’s heading out of the room when he pauses and doubles back. “So, uh,” he says, and he actually seems unsure for once. “Do I have it?”

“Have what?”

“Your forgiveness.”

Chord rubs his chin. He needs to shave, he thinks. He could probably do with a few more hours of shut-eye too. “You don’t need it,” is what he says, standing up and tossing his plate into the garbage. “We’re cool.”

They head back up to the elevators together. It takes a lot of energy to be pissed at someone. Chord’s glad for the break.

 

“So I think Darren might sort of be into dudes,” Mark says, shoving a handful of potato chips into his mouth.

Chord freezes. “What,” he says. “Uh, why do you say that?”

They’re sprawled out on one of the couches backstage, messing around with guitars while they wait for their cue. The Warblers are on stage right now. Chord can hear the teenage girls screaming their lungs out all the way back here. It’s the same thing, night after night. It’s kind of cool to experience, even secondhand.

Mark doesn’t look at him, just wipes his fingers on his pants. Like he hadn’t just dropped a huge bomb. Like maybe he’d just announced the weather. “I dunno,” he says casually. “Mostly intuition.”

Chord can’t believe how dry his throat is. He swallows, twice, and feels like there’s a rock lodged in his esophagus. It’s ridiculous. “Intuition?” he repeats, and he hates that his voice sounds sort of funny. “I didn’t realize you had gay intuition, dude.”

“Don’t doubt The Saw.”

“Riiiight.” Chord fidgets; he tightens his grip around the neck of the guitar to hide how fucking weird he feels. “So what tipped off your intuition?”

“There was a guy,” Mark says. He shovels more chips in, chews thoughtfully, takes his time. Chord half-wants to strangle him. “Last night. They weren’t, like, making sweet man-love in the bathroom, but there was definitely some chemistry there. A vibe.”

“A vibe,” Chord repeats, eyeing him wearily.

“Definite vibe. Darren wanted it. I could tell.”

Chord makes a little _hmm_ noise. He’s not going to agree or disagree. He doesn’t want to take a stance either way.

“If I’m right,” Mark says, scrunching up the bag of chips and dusting crumbs off his tour clothes, “then let’s hope things aren’t weird for the rest of the cast.”

“What?” Chord bites down on the inside of his cheek. “What do you mean?”

“You know—” Mark makes a dirty gesture, one of his trademarked ones. “Chris and Darren, dude,” he adds, when Chord’s face says he clearly doesn’t get it. “You think they’ve hooked up?”

Chord doesn’t mean to, but he can’t help it. He laughs. “Um, no,” he says. “No, I really doubt it.”

“Why? What do you know?”

“Everything.” Chord clears his throat again. He doesn’t want to prolong this conversation. Instead, before Mark can open his mouth, he decides to change subjects, wrinkles up his nose and says, “Hey, have I showed you the Anderson Cooper impression I’ve been working on?”

 

They have two shows on Sunday, which is just about as tiring as it could possibly get. Chord’s finally starting to feel it: a deep ache climbing down his spine, the exhaustion settling right into his bones. The few hours between shows are meant for resting up, getting food, but today everyone wants Mexican and the idea alone makes Chord feel like throwing up. He chooses, a little regretfully, to stay behind.

But he’s not the only one.

He’s flopped on his back on one of the green room couches, feet dangling over the arm, playing a lazy game of NFL Madden when the door swings open. Chord doesn’t even pretend to be surprised anymore.

“Hey,” Darren says. He holds up a bag. “I bought sandwiches. You hungry?”

“Yes,” Chord answers automatically, dropping the controller and scrunching his feet inward, making room on the couch. Sandwiches wouldn’t destroy his body the way burritos would. Also, he really likes to eat.

Darren drops down into the open space. “I’m getting ready to jump out of my skin, man,” he says, passing a BLT over. “Don’t get me wrong—I love this. But it’s hard, you know? It takes a toll on you.”

“Yeah, no, I know what you mean.” Chord takes a big bite, nods gratefully at Darren. It might just be the best thing he’s ever tasted. “I need a break.”

“I need a beer,” Darren says, agreeing.

“I could go for a back massage.”

“Turn around.”

Chord stares at him. “What?”

Darren sets his sandwich down on the coffee table. “Turn around,” he repeats. “I’ll rub your shoulders.”

That’s not—that’s not something guys do, and Chord laughs the empty shell of a laugh and doesn’t move. “I’m good, dude,” he says. He shoves a tomato slice into his mouth.

Darren gives him a look. “It’s not a cheap excuse to feel you up,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been told I’m incredibly good with my hands.”

“I bet you have,” Chord says dryly, but he can’t help but feel the urge to actually do it. He’d probably accept a full-body rubdown from Peewee Herman at this point. He glances over his shoulder at the door. They’ve got at least an hour before the other guys get back, and the only people hanging around are stagehands he doesn’t give a shit about. His brain is screaming no, but. But.

“Turn around,” Darren says for the third time, and he can’t help it: he obeys.

He picks up the controller again, just to have something to do with his hands, just to stop this from getting _too_ weird, but once he’s comfortable and settled the couch behind him dips with Darren’s weight. Darren has one knee pulled up underneath him, and his other leg is pressed right against Chord’s hip. He’s way too aware of the subtle touch. He hates that he’s even thinking about it.

Darren’s hands tense, for just a second, reaching out towards him and pausing tentatively in midair. But his face changes after a second—like he’s determined, like he’s convincing himself of something, and Chord quickly turns back towards the TV screen. He doesn’t want to guess what that expression means.

“One of the band guys got mobbed yesterday walking back to the bus,” Darren says, and then his hands come to rest on Chord’s shoulders—and it takes everything he has not to shiver, because seriously, he is not a girl. “I mean, these girls completely freaked out and started grabbing at him. They even somehow managed to rip his shirt.”

Chord presses start on the game. He vaguely feels like he’s at the hairdresser’s, or the dentist’s, people who feel obligated to make awkward small talk. “Oh yeah?” he says, just to be polite.

“Yeah,” Darren says. His hands run along Chord’s shoulderblades before squeezing, just once, right below the base of his neck. “Want to know why?”

Five seconds in and Chord feels like he’s in heaven. Pathetic, probably, but Darren really _does_ know how to work his hands. “Why?”

“Because they thought he was you.”

Chord laughs, and Darren’s thumbs press slow circles into his shoulders. “Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. Once they realized they backed off completely. Didn’t even apologize.”

“Yeah, well, can you blame them for being disappointed?”

“No,” Darren says quietly, and twists a knuckle into a knot in Chord’s back. He hisses out a breath, can’t stop himself even if he wanted to. He can practically feel Darren smirk. “Man, you’re tense.”

Chord actually has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from sucking in another sharp breath. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, dude, but I’m part of this little thing called a national concert tour, and it’s kiiind of stressful.”

“You’re losing.”

Chord looks over his shoulder. Darren’s face is right there, only a few inches away, and his eyes flicker up to Chord’s. He hates that he knows what color Darren’s eyes are without even having to look. He hates a lot of things his brain has been doing lately.

“What?”

Darren’s smirk fades into a softer smile. His hands pause on Chord’s shoulders, although his fingernails are still dragging lightly over his tshirt, sending sparks all the way through his veins. Darren’s eyes dip down to Chord’s mouth.

“Your videogame,” he says quietly. “You’re losing.”

Chord had forgotten about the videogame. It seems entirely unimportant now. He’s thinking about—about Coachella, about the dreams he’s been having, about watching Darren kiss somebody and wondering what it’d feel like to be them. About jerking off in the shower and thinking the sort of thoughts he was powerless to stop thinking. About having almost an hour to themselves and the empty room and the stress of tour and of not being on the receiving end of an awesome orgasm in weeks, now, or it might’ve been months.

“I have to go,” he says.

Darren’s mouth tightens. “What?”

“I, uh.” He twists away from Darren’s hands; Darren doesn’t try to stop him. “I just remembered something I have to do. This isn’t me being weird, okay? I just really have to go.”

“Okay,” Darren says. Tiredly. Like he’s past the point of putting up a fight. He slumps back against the couch. “Good luck. Doing, you know, whatever it is you have to do.”

“Thanks,” Chord says. He scratches his neck nervously. Leaves the rest of the BLT on the table. Practically bolts out of the room and into the bathroom, where he sits on top of a closed toilet lid and presses his face into his hands and tries not to think about anything at all.

 

During the second show that night Chord does something he’s never done before: he sneaks out from backstage and into the aisle to watch the Warblers set. Except he’s pretty sure that it’s not really even the Warblers, it’s Darren Criss and a bunch of guys in prep school jackets backing him up. Darren knows how to own the stage. He knows how to sing the songs and move his hips and make little girls go crazy just by winking in their general direction, and Chord can’t help it. He’s mesmerized. He’s mesmerized by the way Darren’s hand curls around the microphone and the way he manages to capture everyone’s attention and—and—and he’s starting to come to terms with the fact that Darren Criss is hot.

He is. It’s not a dude thing or a gay thing, it’s just a Darren thing. He’s hot. He’s really, really hot.

Chord goes back into hiding.

He is so fucked.

 

He makes up his mind during the final bows. Darren’s arm slides easily around his waist and he thinks, fine. Okay. He can’t put up with this anymore. It’s driving him fucking crazy. He has to do something about it. He has to do something. He has to.

 

Backstage is a rush of activity and noisiness and everyone scraping their makeup off and changing into tshirts and the van ride back to the hotel is a long stretch of nothing but sleepy silence and in the lobby they say their goodnights and zombie off to their separate rooms, and Chord paces around in the hallway for ten minutes because he can’t find his room key and because his head is so full it could burst.

He thinks about going downstairs to the hotel bar and getting a drink first, but even that—that’s not what he wants, and he knows it. He draws in a deep steely breath. Lets his feet carry him to room 514. He hovers outside the threshold for two long uncertain minutes before he works up the courage to knock. Chord never used to think he was a cowardly dude. This is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

Darren answers the door in glasses and sweatpants, messy hair. He looks surprised to see Chord. That’s probably the only reason Chord allows himself to stay.

“What’s going on?” Darren asks him, warily. Like he maybe thinks he’s going to get chewed out for something. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Chord’s got so much energy he doesn’t know what to do with it. He thinks his stomach is turning in on itself except that he doesn’t even feel sick, just—just a jumbled mess of nerves and terror and deep down wanting, _so_ much wanting, and he can’t deal with it anymore. He takes a step into the room. He lets the door close behind him. The only light’s coming from a muted desk lamp, so there’s a shadow across Darren’s face, and Chord can pretend he’s not looking at him the way he can’t help but actually look at him. There’s a book lying open on the bed, dog-eared beside the pillow, and knowing that Darren was calmly reading while Chord was tracing and retracing his mindless footsteps makes him feel sort of crazy.

“Chord?” Darren says, quiet. Watching him.

“I—”

Chord sucks in a breath. He doesn’t have any sufficient words or explanations; he’s all talked out. He’s never been the eloquent one. Do things first, come up with excuses later.

Darren’s still looking at him like that.

Chord takes two uncertain steps forward, lifts an uncertain hand, curls it uncertainly around Darren’s neck. Darren tenses but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even really breathe, just lets his gaze flicker first to Chord’s mouth and then to his eyes, confused, but like he’s afraid if he speaks he’ll scare him off. Chord can’t be scared off. Not anymore. He’s tired of being scared.

He leans in, slowly, so slowly, and kisses him.

It’s soft at first, tentative, but then Darren makes a low breathy noise against his lips and Chord nearly stumbles over his own feet trying to push in closer, his fingers curling into Darren’s cotton tshirt, and it’s sort of messy and sort of really awesome. Darren is as good at kissing as he is at everything else in the world, even if Chord has a good few inches on him, even if he’s not used to kissing someone with a five o’clock shadow. It’s pretty much everything he’d thought he wanted and then some. It feels _right_ , right in a way that Chord knows he’ll never be able to explain. He doesn’t even question it. Can’t question it. He’s too busy kissing.

A second later, or maybe a hundred seconds later, because Chord feels almost-drunk and he has no grasp whatsoever on time, Darren’s hands find the hem of Chord’s shirt. They slip up underneath the material, fingers running lightly along his abs like he’d never been able to touch them before, like he’d been wanting for a long time to do this—maybe since Coachella, he doesn’t know. But Chord goes along with it. Pulls his shirt off and over his head, drops it the floor because he _needs_ this, he needs so much more. Darren pulls back and looks at him with this crazy sort of want in his eyes, and a shiver runs down Chord’s spine. He’s half-naked and exposed and it’s not even bothering him, not anymore.

“Hang on,” Darren says lowly, and it actually looks like it’s paining him to speak, to put the brakes on—whatever’s happening here, whatever’s about to happen. “You’re not going to freak out on me, are you? Because I’m running out of ways to get you to hang out with me again. A guy can only try so hard, you know?”

Chord licks his lips. They feel extraordinarily dry. “No,” he says. “I’m not going to freak out this time.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise. But I don’t—I mean, I’m still not—”

Darren laughs calmly. Chord sort of hates him for being able to be so cool and rational about this whole thing. Except that he doesn’t actually hate him, because he can’t. He’s tried.

“Don’t worry,” Darren says, and he’s leaning in again. “I’m not gonna ask for a promise ring.”

When they kiss this time it goes a lot smoother, like they’ve already found their groove, no accidental nose-bumping, Darren’s palm pressed flat against his chest. Chord doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this good, and without even really meaning to he’s nudging Darren backwards, back towards the bed, and Darren goes without complaint. They don’t stop kissing and touching and touching and kissing, and Chord reaches up and pulls Darren’s glasses off, even though he likes the way they make him look, and he sets them aside, and he’s already wrinkled Darren’s shirt from the too-tight grip he’d had rolled between his fingers so the practical thing to do is to get rid of it too, and Darren does without making a big deal out of it, just pulls it up over his shoulders (he’s got incredible arm muscles, and Chord doesn’t know how he’s never really noticed that before) and it joins Chord’s on the carpet, discarded, forgotten.

“I’ve wanted this so much,” Darren nearly groans, but it’s still quiet and half-mumbled, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say that. Chord’s breathing fast and he doesn’t care because he feels the exact same way.

Darren turns them around mid-kiss and gives Chord a gentle shove that sends him to the corner of the hotel mattress, one hand bracing back against the bed, the other sliding along the warm skin of Darren’s back, exploring, feeling. Darren presses one last quick kiss against his lips before moving his mouth to new places, his jaw, his neck, bites down a little at the hollow of Chord’s throat and he moans, louder and needier than he’d intended, but Darren doesn’t stay in one place too long, like he’d learned something from the hickey debacle of last time. He trails his tongue along Chord’s collarbone, still hovering over him, and Chord likes this shift in positions, the fact that Darren’s taller than him when he’s sitting down, the fact that he’s taking control and mouthing wet kisses down his chest.

He’s about to yank him up for another real kiss when Darren, with no uncertainty, drops down to his knees between Chord’s spread legs.

“Darren,” he says, and his voice is raspier than he’s ever heard it, but Darren just looks at him with an imploring grin and doesn’t even really wait for the answer. His hands move to Chord’s basketball shorts, and maybe he should’ve worn something with a little more coverage because right now it’s pretty evident how much he wants this, but that doesn’t matter because Darren’s fingers are dipping into the waistband and he waits another three seconds like he’s waiting for Chord to call the whole thing off but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, and so Darren tugs his shorts down and his boxers come with them, and he has to shift on the mattress, lift his hips for them to come off all the way, and Darren’s as careful with sliding them off his feet as he is with everything he does in life, and just like that, Chord’s naked.

It had been dark last time and Chord’s pants had been barely shoved down to his knees so this was different, _so_ different, with Darren’s face only inches away, his hands running up Chord’s bare thighs, fingernails dragging along his calf muscles, planting a kiss to the inside of Chord’s knee that actually makes his breath catch, and then Darren’s wrapping a hand around him, like last time and not at all like last time, because even in the dim lighting Darren’s looking up at him through incredibly thick eyelashes, watching him intently as he strokes him for the first few times.

Chord pulls his free hand up to his mouth and bites down hard on his knuckle, so hard he’ll probably have teeth indents there in the morning, and Darren says, low, “Can I?” and there is only one possible answer for that, which is a very sure, very resounding _yes._

Darren wets his lips with his tongue and it’s in the top ten hottest things Chord has ever seen, ever, before finally lowering his eyes and dipping his head forward and wrapping his mouth around him, and Chord can barely stop his hips from pushing up again, has to actually physically restrain himself, and Darren’s hands hook under Chord’s knees and pull him closer, and he knows what he’s doing, he has to, because there’s no way this is his first time when it feels so fucking amazing.

And it does. _So_ fucking amazing.

Chord’s other hand reaches down and cards through Darren’s hair, loose and shower-fresh, and he thinks his has to be about a thousand times better than the gel shit they do for the show, because his fingers get wrapped around a curl and he gives it a little tug that makes Darren groan around him and he can _feel_ the vibrato from his throat and it shoots straight through his entire body, until he can barely think straight anymore. He’s not going to last much longer, he knows he’s not, because Darren really fucking knows how to use his mouth.

“Dude,” Chord says, because even now he can’t shake that habit, even when he’s getting a blowjob from a guy he’s fooled around with twice, and he draws in a long shaky breath. “Dude, I’m going to—” and he knows Darren knows what he means, but the thing is— _he doesn’t pull off._

Chord’s had a handful of girlfriends who’ve all refused to swallow, and he can’t blame them, he thinks, he wouldn’t want that shit in his mouth either, but he’s always secretly _wanted_ them to, thought there’d be nothing hotter than watching them do it, and the fact that Darren’s still going at it does all sorts of things to Chord’s brain and body in general and his grip in Darren’s hair tightens as he comes, skin slicked with sweat, panting heavily, chest rising and falling in an irregular pattern.

Darren stays kneeled for as long as it takes to slip Chord’s shorts back up his thighs, and then he’s wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and climbing back up to his feet, wincing a little, and Chord doesn’t exactly have his shit together and he’s still in this incredible orgasmic high so he doesn’t know what to say, but he guesses that’s okay. That Darren doesn’t expect him to say anything just yet. He’s not going to kiss him again, not until he brushes his teeth at least, even if he sort of wants to, because that’s just too much. But he doesn’t know what the next step is. He doesn’t know where to go from here.

“Everything cool?” Darren asks, and he sits beside Chord on the mattress, and Chord can tell through his sweatpants he’s still hard, even if he’s not currently doing anything about it.

“Yeah, man,” Chord says, surprised by how much that’s true. “That was. You are. Yeah.”

Darren laughs quietly and rests his cheek against Chord’s bare shoulder for a second. It feels weird, but not bad weird. When he turns his nose inward Chord thinks he can feel Darren smiling against his skin.

“So,” Chord says, and he gestures towards Darren’s pants. “I should probably—”

Except he doesn’t know _how_. The majority of it is self-explanatory; he’s got a dick, he knows how to work one. But how does he work up the balls to stick his hand down another dude’s pants? What’s he supposed to do once he’s in there?

“Hey,” Darren says.

Chord looks at him.

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I know, but I—”

“Hey,” Darren repeats, and he’s looking at Chord all understandingly (he is always so fucking understanding) and presses his hand against Chord’s back, rubs a warm circle into the skin along his spine. “Seriously, you don’t have to. You’re not comfortable with it, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Look, if you feel like trying later, then maybe we can…” He trails off, like maybe he’s wondering if he’s overstepped his boundaries. By assuming there’s going to be a later. A repeat incident. This happening again.

There is so going to be a later. Chord already knows it.

“Yeah,” Chord says, and his voice sounds foreign. “I will. Honest.”

Darren smiles at him, a legitimate smile, and Chord looks down at his hands and sort of grins. He has no idea what any of this means, but they both knew it was nothing serious, that there was no terminology necessary, no declarative statements. They just were.

“However.” Darren stands up, adjusts his pants as discreetly as he possibly can, which isn’t very discreetly at all. “I _do_ have to take care of this. So. I’m, uh, going to hit up the bathroom and you can stick around and watch TV or—”

Chord thinks he should probably leave, but he doesn’t actually want to. That one’s new. “I have no idea where my room key is,” he admits.

“Then I guess you’re crashing here tonight.”

Because they’d sprung for single rooms this time, there’s only the one king size bed. He’s shared smaller beds with bigger dudes before, but not usually post-orgasm, not when he’s still feeling spent and limbless and _good_ all over. “I guess so,” he says.

Darren grabs his toothbrush out of his bag and points it right at Chord. “But I swear to God if you snore I’m making you sleep in the hallway,” he threatens, and then he disappears into the bathroom, and Chord finds himself straining his ears to hear the showerhead blast on, and with that sort of imagery, those sort of sounds, how can he not picture what Darren’s doing?

He crawls backwards on the bed, props himself up on the headboard, turns the TV on but lowers the volume and doesn’t really pay attention. He grabs Darren’s glasses off the nightstand and puts them on but only because he wants to see if Darren’s one of those guys who wears them not out of necessity but because they think they look good in glasses, and his vision goes all screwy so he guesses Darren’s not. He’s blinking up at the ceiling through the lenses when the shower turns off, and a minute later the bathroom door opens and Darren is standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist and looking at him weirdly.

“Hey,” Chord says.

Darren just stares at him. ‘You look…”

“Stupid?”

“No,” Darren says, and laughs. “Not stupid. You look hot.”

That sends a slight flush down Chord’s neck (as if he didn’t already know that Darren thought he was hot—most guys didn’t spend their nights blowing people they thought were ugly) and he reaches up and takes the glasses off and sets them back down. “How’d it go in there?” he asks, and then hates himself for asking. What kind of question is that?

But Darren just pulls a pair of clean boxers on and drops the towel, doesn’t bother with a shirt. “Not bad for my second shower in an hour,” he grins, and then he joins Chord on the bed, flops down beside him, touches Chord’s leg with one finger feather-light. Chord suppresses a shiver. “But I’m beat. Don’t hold it against me if I pass out in, like, six seconds.”

“Yeah, no, I won’t. I’m pretty tired myself.”

“Okay then.” All of a sudden Darren pushes himself up with one hand; he looks relaxed and comfortable and way more okay with this progression than Chord is, but he can’t worry about that right now. Can’t let himself think about it. It doesn’t have to _mean_ anything. It doesn’t.

Chord realizes what he’s about to do about two seconds before he does it, because Darren’s looking at his mouth and then he’s leaning in, and holy shit, he’s about to kiss him goodnight. He hasn’t kissed anyone goodnight in—in far too long, and that somehow seems a thousand times gayer than anything else they’ve done in the past hour, and even though he’s holding true to his promise and not freaking out, it’s still too much, and he turns his head at the last second so Darren’s lips graze the side of his jaw instead. Chord doesn’t pull his eyes up, but he can feel Darren hesitate beside him before backing away.

Darren’s not the type to drop things, though. Of course he’s not.

“Too much?” he says, and he says it in a falsely cheerful voice. “Yeah, too much.”

“It’s just—”

“No, I get it. That was presumptuous of me. I mean, what am I, your prom date?”

Chord offers up a little laugh. “My prom date wouldn’t even let me touch her,” he admits. “I accidentally stepped on her foot during the cha-cha slide and she spent the rest of the night glaring at me.”

“Ooh. Rough.”

“She was a bitch,” Chord says. “I only asked her because she had really great boobs.”

Darren snorts. “You’re charming, Chord Overstreet,” he says, and he drops back down onto the blankets, kicks his legs out beneath him. “A regular Casanova.”

They’re quiet for a minute; Chord rolls over onto his back and pillows his head in his hands, stares up at the ceiling. A car commercial’s playing softly in the background. Whether he realizes he’s doing it or not, Darren’s humming along.

Because he’s fucking exhausted and because they have to be up in God-knows how many hours and because it’s not like he has anywhere better to go, Chord tugs the covers up from near their feet, pulls them over both of their bodies. His arm brushes against Darren’s. He leaves it there.

After a few seconds of silence Darren reaches over and turns the desk lamp off, so the only light in the room is coming from the soft blue glow of the television. He peeks at Chord with one eye closed and says, sounding quiet and sleepy, “Just so you know, I’m not making you breakfast in the morning.”

Chord grins against the sheets without meaning to. “Wouldn’t ask you to,” he says back, and he thinks he should feel weird about this—he _does_ feel weird about this, but not in the way he’d expect. He’s warm and comfortable and happy, almost, or as close as he’s been to it in weeks. Putting more thought into that seems dumb. So he doesn’t. He just goes to sleep.

 

Chord wakes up with a warm arm pressed around his body, fingers splayed open against his chest. He knows where he is. There’s no crazy disorientation, no rush of blood to his head as he remembers. He’s not going to allow himself the momentary freak out, even though he’s lying near-naked in a hotel bed with Darren Criss. It is what it is. It wasn’t how he planned to start the day—or, any day ever, in his whole entire life—but it’s not like he can rewind time. Not like he really even wants to.

He doesn’t want to be there when Darren wakes up, though. That part’s still weird. Waking up next to someone in the morning is about a hundred times more intimate than falling asleep beside them, and he doesn’t want intimacy. He wants things to be quick and easy and as clean as possible. So he very slowly and very carefully peels back the blankets, slips out from underneath Darren’s arm, climbs out of the bed and collects his clothes, tugs his shirt back on over his head. Official wake-up time’s not for an hour. He can slip back into his room and shower and get his shit together, at least.

But he doesn’t want Darren to think he ran off, like he’s afraid to face him. He’s not going to leave a note on the pillow (that only happened in chick flicks, and besides, what if room service found it, what if someone sold it to TMZ for a couple hundred bucks?) but he does shoot him a quick text. _Went 2 shower,_ he writes. _See u on the bus._ Darren stays passed out on the pillow, doesn’t even stir.

It turns out his room key had been in his pocket the entire time. Who knew.

 

Chord’s one of the first ones downstairs for breakfast. He makes himself a big plate of eggs and bacon and pancakes—he’d worked up an appetite last night, apparently—and drops down at a table, watches Sportscenter as he shovels food into his mouth. Mark and Jenna trickle in a little later, and they talk about stupid shit for the next half hour, about the décor of the hotel rooms and the fact that Mark had broken into the minibar last night.

“What about you, C?” Mark asks through a mouthful of biscuit. “What’d you do last night?”

“The usual,” Chord says, and he feels a quick flash of heat against the back of his neck, but he shoves it down, pushes it away. “Churned butter. Knitted a sweater.”

Jenna snorts into her coffee. “God, our lives are exciting.”

The doors swing open and Lea and Darren file into the room, chatting about something or other. Chord tries not to pay an inordinate amount of attention to them but it’s like his eyes are magnetically drawn there, even as they’re innocuously helping themselves to orange juice. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Like Darren’s going to announce what happened in the middle of the continental breakfast. Like he’s going to nudge Chord in the ribs and be like, “So how about that blowjob last night?”

But that doesn’t happen. Darren’s as normal as ever. He drops down into his normal seat next to Chord’s, flashes a completely normal grin, says, “Morning, guys,” in a normally cheerful tone. He doesn’t give any Chord any lingering looks. He doesn’t try to hold his hand under the table.

At one point during the conversation he does lock eyes with Chord, though, and he gives him a little wink so quick and subtle Chord’s not entirely sure he didn’t make it up, and he finds himself… weirdly calm. Okay with it. With them. Whatever.

He doesn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. They still have a few more weeks of tour.

 

They don’t find any alone time for most of the day, although they’re not really actively searching it out. Chord’s not counting down the minutes until he can disappear into a storage closet and pull Darren in with him. Darren’s not shooting him secret little looks of longing. They’re normal. They goof around with the other guys. They continue to play videogames backstage. Darren continues to lose.

Cory throws himself onto the couch between them and he says, “I see you two have kissed and made up,” and Chord just snorts and ignores him, focuses a little more intently on the controller in his hands.

“I baked him a friendship pie,” Darren says coolly, and Chord’s glad he’s in the business of actors, glad everyone he hangs out with is a convincing liar.

“What flavor?”

“Rainbow. With fairy dust sprinkles.”

“Ah, man,” Cory says. “That’s my favorite.”

“Good thing I saved you a slice, then,” Chord tosses in, doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “But you’ll have to get it. It’s in my pants.”

Cory lunges at him, knocking the controller clean out of his hands, and he presses him full-bodied against the couch, groping him unceremoniously through his jeans. “I don’t _feel_ it,” he says, and Chord laughs and struggles against him, trying his best to elbow him in the face. His arms are pinned against the cushions, though, so the most he can do is sort of wiggle under Cory’s hands. That asshole.

“A little help here?” he asks, craning his neck back to look at Darren.

Darren just lifts his hands. “What do you think I can do?” he says reasonably. “He’s got a foot on me.”

“Then bite him in the shins!”

“If you bite me in the shins,” Cory says, “I’ll be forced to get backup. We’ll have to go all kung fu on your ass.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Darren says. “Sorry Chord.”

Chord shoves at Cory again, but it does virtually nothing. Cory slides his hand into Chord’s back pocket, really wriggles his hand in there. He’s got a whole handful of ass. “No pie here,” he says. “I think I was deceived.”

“You are so gay,” Chord says, before he can stop himself, and he sort of freezes immediately after. Cory doesn’t notice, but Darren’s eyebrows go all high.

“And by that you mean merry and spritely, right, Chord?” he says, and he’s either being a douchebag or giving him an out. Chord’s grateful for either.

“Obviously,” he says. “What else would I mean?”

Cory gives him one last pat on the butt before climbing up off of him. “I am spritely, aren’t I?” he says, and Chord can’t think of anything less spritely than a guy with miles of arms and zero sense of balance. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to go see if I can stream the Canucks game back here. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could wear a pair of glasses on stage and have them stream the games into the lenses? The future, man. It’s coming.”

Chord waits until he’s disappeared out into the hallway before rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to Darren. “He’d start beating his chest and screaming halfway through Don’t Stop Believing,” he says. “That would never work.”

Darren laughs. “Right, _that’s_ why it wouldn’t work. Leave it to you to find fault in his logic.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

There’s a moment of silence between them; Chord shifts in his seat and leans his head back against the cushion, but keeps his eyes set on Darren the entire time. He clears his throat. “Sorry about—” he starts, pauses awkwardly. “I didn’t mean—you know. I didn’t mean ‘gay’ as in stupid. Like, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.”

“And you’re apologizing to me because?”

Chord bites his fingernails, which he only ever does when he’s anxious. He can’t help it. It’s a terrible habit. “Because I’m trying to be a good person,” he says, the only answer he has. It’s not that he thinks Darren is gay—knows Darren is at least part-gay. Sort of gay. Quasi-gay. It’s just that sometimes his mouth moves faster than his brain, that sometimes he says things without thinking them through first. It’s a bad habit. He’s trying to stop.

Darren grins. “You are a good person, Chord. You’re also forgiven. Mostly because—” His eyes dart around conspiratorially, and then he lowers his voice. “—I’m feeling pretty merry and spritely right now.”

That sends a sudden warmth to the tips of Chord’s ears, but not an unwelcome one. “I bet you are,” he says, and even though he has this new unwritten no-overt-touching-in-public rule, he reaches out and pulls at Darren’s Dalton tie, watches the way it strains against his neck. “What the hell does spritely mean, anyway?”

“Oh Chord.” Darren gives off this longsuffering sigh, but he puts his hand over Chord’s and gives it an affectionate little squeeze. “I should go get ready. Do you want to—” He pauses, seems to rethink what he was about to say. Shrugs his shoulders. “I’ll see you tonight?”

“I’m sure you will,” Chord says, and he can’t even help it, that excited little tug in the pit of his stomach. He hasn’t felt that tug in ages. He bends down and picks the controller up off the floor, and then he shoots Darren a little grin. It’s kind of cool having a secret, as fucked up as it might be. It’s like. It’s their thing, and no one has to know, and they can stop at any time. Really. They can.

Really.

 

Darren sits next to Chord on the bus back to the hotel. It’s late and it’s dark outside and it’s unseasonably chilly, and they don’t talk at all, but it’s one of the most comfortable silences he’s ever experienced. Darren leans his shoulder against Chord’s, casual, easy, and Chord lets him. He stares out the window and up at the endless expanse of sky. Usually it makes him feel tiny and insignificant compared to all that vastness, the innumerable stars, but tonight he feels alive and full and content in his own skin. It’s a nice change. He decides he likes it.

 

They’re kissing before the door’s even all the way closed, which is stupid and reckless and surprisingly hot. It wasn’t like Darren was jumping his bones; one second they were walking down the hallway, the next they were passing through the threshold and grabbing at necks and shoulders and fistfuls of tshirts. Sometimes it takes awhile to get used to kissing someone, to really learn them, but that’s not how it is with Darren. It just works. Their mouths and their bodies fit together, and there’s no conscientious thinking, just a whole lot of _doing._ And Chord really likes doing.

They somehow scored a room together. Chord figures it’s probably because of Darren, but he doesn’t question it. He just accepts it for what it is.

“God,” Darren says in a little half-whine against his mouth, and he shoves him up against the door (closed, now) and kisses him breathless. Chord likes that there’s nothing sweet about this, nothing gentle at all. When he has to stop for oxygen Darren doesn’t pull away, mumbles up against his lips, “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”

“Yeah,” Chord agrees, and he’s already rucking up Darren’s shirt, his hands slipping up under the loose material, and Darren lets out a little hiss when cold fingers press against his warm skin, touching, feeling. He feels more confident than he did last night. Like he’s had an entire day to process and nothing’s changed, he still wants this, wants it so badly, and what the fuck else can he do? He kisses Darren again and then his hands ghost over his stomach, trail down to his sweatpants. He’s glad he’s wearing something with a loose waistband, glad he can traverse to the next step without too much trouble, without having to cleanly get a pair of pants off. He nibbles on Darren’s bottom lip and slides his hand in.

A shocked and sort of strangled noise comes from the back of Darren’s throat, and he pulls away from his mouth to rest his forehead against Chord’s shoulder, says breathily, “Chord, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” Chord says, and he’s laughing a little, and his hand is curling around him, and it really isn’t that different from going at it on his own. He’s just going in from a different angle, that’s all, and they’re different but not bad different, and Darren’s face would be enough to make up for it even if it was. “Shut up and enjoy this, okay? I _want_ to.”

“Okay.” Darren turns his face inwards and presses his lips against Chord’s neck and makes a little gaspy noise that Chord can _feel_ when he flicks his wrist a certain way, so he does it again. One of Darren’s hands move up and his fingers tangle into Chord’s hair, tug at it lightly in the back, scrape lightly against his scalp, and it feels so fucking good that Chord’s quickening the pace of his hand without really realizing he’s doing it, and he likes that Darren is leaning against him, holding onto him, like he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up otherwise, like Chord’s first messy handjob is that damn good.

“Fuck, Chord,” Darren says, and he’s pushing against him, and Chord’s wrist is starting to ache and even that’s not so bad, which is why he’s starting to think that you can get used to anything. Even this.

And hearing his name from Darren’s mouth, right now, like this, it’s actually _doing_ things to him. He almost can’t believe he’d been resisting this for months.

He can tell Darren’s about to finish right before he actually does, because Chord’s free hand is wrapped around Darren’s waist and he can actually feel his spine stiffen, and the way he sort of bucks against him, almost desperately, and then there’s a deep groan from the back of his throat and his chest is heaving as he comes. He looks so fucking hot, all messy and undone when he’s usually so put together, that Chord has to bite back an embarrassing noise of his own as he’s stroking him through, and they’re both sort of breathing heavily, and Darren presses three chaste kisses against his mouth when he slides his hand out. As chaste as they can be when his hand’s covered in—well.

“I’d get a tissue but I’m not sure my legs can function,” Darren says apologetically, and Chord snorts and makes sure he’s not going to fall over before ducking into the bathroom and coming out with an entire roll of toilet paper. He wipes his hand off carefully before handing the roll to Darren. No matter how much he liked it, he is so not doing _that_ part. And besides, he’s glad for the distraction. He still doesn’t know what comes after this. He doesn’t know how to move on to level two—he really hopes, at least, that there’s a level two, because his jeans are feeling uncomfortably tight. And he hates awkward situations. What if Darren just wants to go to bed? Chord had done that to him, after all. It’d only be fair and all that shit.

“Hey Chord,” Darren says.

He glances up. Darren’s got this look on his face, this kind of weird, kind of tentative look. But he’s also not avoiding eye contact, not even pretending to. Chord swallows thickly. “Yeah?”

“Do you maybe want to take a shower?”

A little shiver prickles up his spine. He’s seen the showers. They aren’t that big. But—

But. There’s always a fucking but.

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s already reaching for the hem of his shirt. “I do.”

 

The next morning Darren wakes up before he does, and he presses a soft and sleepy kiss to the underside of Chord’s jaw. It’s probably the best wake-up call he’s had all tour, even though he groans and sort of curls in on himself, but then Darren wraps his hand around Chord’s neck, his thumb grazing the skin just below his ear, and it’s—good. There are two beds in this room. One bed for each person. Somehow they’d ended up sleeping in the same one. (He doesn’t really think it’s that much of a coincidence.) They’re both naked, too, or almost. Chord’s jeans are still lying discarded on the bathroom floor. Darren’s sweatpants are hanging over an armchair.

“Good morning,” Darren says quietly.

“Morning,” he returns. The early sunlight’s flooding in through the window, and it’s casting a shadow across Darren’s face so that he can barely see the quirk of his lips, the pillow lines on his forehead. Chord closes his eyes and relaxes against Darren’s hand, lets his toes brush against Darren’s bare calf.

“Wanna get breakfast?”

“Not really.”

“Coffee?”

“Nah.”

“Want to roll around on the mattress and make out like horny teenagers?”

Chord laughs out loud at that. “Yeah, actually,” he says, because as long as they’re being honest. “But not until you’ve brushed your teeth and get rid of your stank-ass breath.”

Darren nearly trips over his feet scrambling out of the bed.

“That goes for you too,” he calls over his shoulder, and his boxers are hanging dangerously low on his hips, and Chord can’t stop looking. He kicks the blankets aside and adjusts himself; they have to be ready in an hour, which could technically be enough time to take care of matters but more than likely isn’t. It’s strange, though, because this isn’t a one-night stand. Darren’s not someone he’s never going to see again. They can pick up where they left off tonight. And tomorrow. And for once that idea doesn’t completely scare the shit out of him.

Chord swings his legs over the side of the mattress. “Bring me my toothbrush,” he says, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He figures they’re close enough now that he can make those sort of ridiculous demands. “I don’t want to get up.”

Darren snorts, but he does it anyway. “You’re lucky I like you,” he says, toothbrush poking out of his own mouth, and he sits beside him, close enough for their knees to touch. Even now the slightest brush of skin shoots electric-hot energy straight to his crotch. (He is so screwed.)

“I’m lucky for a lot of reasons,” Chord says, which is corny but true.

“Yeah.” Darren jiggles his toothbrush sort of thoughtfully, tips his head back and looks straight up at the ceiling. He smells like spearmint and Old Spice and Chord wants to kiss him for no real reason at all. “We all are, though.” He twists his neck so that he can look at Chord, offers him up a small smile. “Some of us more than others.”

Chord just nods.

So, so screwed.

 

Chord’s sisters always do this thing where they bug the heck out of him when they think he’s keeping a secret, which is more often than not because there are about a thousand things he would never tell them in his whole entire life. They outnumber him, though, and even when he’s halfway across the country they have this way of knowing. It starts with a text message, and then about a hundred text messages, and then the emails, and even his brother gets in on it somehow, messages him on Twitter—on fucking Twitter, of all places—to ask him if he’s dating someone. All of his texts back are the same. No. No. No. Of course not.

They all liked Darren. The few times they’d met him he’d been his normal stupidly charming self, and he’s pretty sure at least two-thirds of them have big schoolgirl crushes on him, and honestly, who didn’t like Darren? But even _thinking_ about the idea of—of—of somehow finding a way to explain this ridiculous situation to them is laughable. He could never. Would never. And it’s not like he feels any need to. He’s pretty sure this thing has an expiration date, one that just so happens to coincide with the end of tour. Or—maybe, maybe it could last while they’re shooting season three, because their apartments aren’t that far from each other, but he’s not really thinking about the future. Chord prefers to stay in the present. With his feet planted firmly on the ground.

His oldest sister sends him a text that says, _You better not be fooling around with random fans_ , and he’s sort of relieved that that’s what she thinks he’s doing. Overstreets are not in the business of hooking up with people who have the same junk as themselves. Chord doesn’t want to be the one to break the mold.

It’s funny how less than a year ago he was worried about playing a gay character on TV, and now there’s this. Life always throws the weirdest fucking curveballs at him.

 

It becomes regular. This. Them. Every night Chord and Darren find some time to be alone—they can’t always have a room to themselves, can’t kick Mark out onto his ass in the hallway, because that would raise suspicion and that’s the last thing either of them want. But sometimes it’s sloppy handjobs in the bathroom. Sometimes it’s a makeout session in a storage closet. Sometimes it’s just playing footsie under the dinner table, which is totally lame and Chord will never own up to it, but it happens. Once or twice.

They’re laying in bed together post-show, post-orgasm in a hotel room in Somewhere, America when Darren clears his throat. Chord can’t even keep track of where they are anymore; everything has started to blur together, cities and states and arenas. Darren had been lazily kissing Chord’s neck for the better part of the last five minutes, and Chord’s a little disappointed when he pulls away.

“I wanna tell you something,” Darren says, which is never the start of a good conversation. Chord’s spine tenses without even really knowing why.

“Yeah?”

“You, uh, remember that conversation we had? About my being in an open relationship and—”

“Yeah,” Chord says quickly, because he doesn’t want Darren to go into specifics. He still thinks it’s weird. Tries not to think about it at all.

Darren licks his lips. He looks a little nervous, which is unusual. It’d probably be less unusual if they were wearing clothes. “I called her today,” he finally says. “And I broke things off.”

Chord’s forehead wrinkles. He’s not sure how to take that. Not sure what the proper response is. Not sure why there’s a faint twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You did?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

That draws a laugh out of Darren, even though it’s a startled, quiet one. “Because of you, dumbass.”

“I didn’t ask you to—”

“No, I know you didn’t. But I just didn’t think it was fair to her when this turned into—you know. A thing.”

It is a thing. Whether or not he wants to admit it, it’s a thing.

Chord goes quiet, thoughtful. “Yeah,” is all he can come up with, and it feels massively underwhelming. But what else is he supposed to say? Thanks for dumping your girlfriend on account of how much you like making out with me?

Darren edges his knee in between Chord’s legs, lets their feet entangle loosely. “No pressure,” he says. “I just wanted you to know.”

He doesn’t really know how they ended up here. Like this. He doesn’t know why he’s okay with it, and he doesn’t know what it’s going to turn into.

But he likes it.

“Okay,” he says, and he turns his head in and presses his lips against the crook of Darren’s elbow. “Okay.”

 

They make it down to breakfast the next morning, eventually, because Chord gets cranky when his stomach’s empty, and because Darren says he can’t function without a cup of coffee. It seems just about everyone else is sleeping in, though, because Chris is the only other person they recognize in the room. Two teenaged girls in the corner are staring at him and giggling over their pancakes. Chris offers them a scrunch-faced _help me_ look when they walk in.

“Shoot,” Darren says, patting his pockets. “I forgot my glasses. I’ll be right back.”

So Chord fills up a plate by himself and then makes his way over to the table Chris is occupying, pushes a notebook out of the way so he can sit down. “Morning,” he says, digging his fingernails into an orange peel and pulling it away in strips.

“Thank God you’re here,” Chris says quietly back. “Two more minutes alone and I think those girls were about to attack me.”

Chord looks over his shoulder at them and, embarrassed at being caught, they both immerse themselves into their breakfasts like they hadn’t had a proper meal in years. “You just have to make them uncomfortable. It always works for me. Have you seen that girl on Youtube, the one who makes the face—?”

“I prefer _not_ to terrify my middle school fans,” Chris says, giving him one of his patented Chris Colfer looks. Those things have been known to kill rattlesnakes.

“I’m just saying. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

Chris only has a half-eaten slice of wheat toast on his plate, which makes Chord feel like a fatass with his sausage and biscuits and gravy and fruit, but he doesn’t really care. There’s another opened notebook in front of Chris, and he’s reading it with his tongue poked into his cheek in concentration, and there’s a pencil tucked behind his ear. Chord studies him while he eats. They don’t hang out that often. Chris is usually doing stuff with the girls, or on his own. The time they’d spent at the bookstore together, Chris had actually spent an entire _hour_ browsing through the fiction section, while Chord had stood near the front of the store, boredly flipping through magazines. They’d barely talked.

But he’s a cool guy. He likes Chris, genuinely likes him. When he’d first signed onto the show, when he was first slated to play Kurt’s boyfriend, Chris had told him that if he had any questions or needed any advice that he was there for him. And now he can’t help but think… well, he’s sort of in the same situation. Sort of. Right? And who would have better advice than Chris, a dude who’s been out of the closet for years? Chris wouldn’t spread something like this around. He’d understand. He’d get it.

Chord clears his throat. “Hey Chris,” he says slowly, purposely not looking at him, dragging his fork over his plate. “How’d… how’d you know you, uh. You know. Liked guys?”

There’s a long stretch of silence. When Chord works up the courage to raise his gaze, he’s all but gaping at him, his mouth slightly open.

“Oh my God,” he says.

Heat crawls up the back of Chord’s neck painfully fast. “That’s not—” he says quickly, and what the hell was he thinking? This was the worst idea ever. “I’m not—I was just asking.”

“Do you know how often straight boys who aren’t least leaning _slightly_ to this side of bicurious ask that question, Chord? Never. They never do.”

“It’s not me,” Chord attempts weakly, “it’s—”

“Please don’t use the ‘so I have this friend’ line on me. We both know I’m too smart for that.”

Chord says nothing. Chris’s face softens after a second or two, like he’s suddenly realizing that he’s not being messed with, that there’s nothing at all funny about this. “Okay,” he says, “um. I wasn’t prepared for this at nine in the morning. But it’s different for everyone. There’s no universal epiphany moment. And—”

“You know what,” Chord interrupts, “you’re right, dude. Nine o’clock is way too early for this. Can we forget this whole thing happened? Please?”

Chris doesn’t look like he wants to let it go, but maybe he can see the desperation on Chord’s face. Maybe he’s just feeling charitable. “I don’t mind talking to you, Chord,” he says, “and there are plenty of other people who would be willing to—”

Chord’s forehead wrinkles in alarm. Chris cuts himself off this time.

“Fine,” he says. “But the offer still stands.”

The doors open again and Darren, finally, comes back into the room, wearing his glasses. He looks like he’s humming something to himself; as he passes their table on the way to the coffeemaker, he shoots Chord a little wink. It would’ve seemed innocuous any other time, but now, now is the worst timing in the _world_ and he can’t help the fact that the tips of his ears turn pink. Chris pauses with his toast in hand, looking slowly from Darren to Chord, and then his eyes go big and wide.

“Oh my God,” he says again.

“No,” Chord says immediately. “It’s not—”

Chris’s hands go up in the air. “I don’t want to know,” he says. “If this is some sort of weird method acting, or—”

“Who’s method acting?” Darren asks cheerfully from behind them, cup of coffee in his hands. He blows on it and then offers them a grin.

Chord pushes his plate of food away. “I’ve suddenly just lost my appetite,” he announces to the table at large. “I think for, like, the rest of my life. I will never be hungry again.”

Darren raises his eyebrows at Chris. “What’s wrong with him?”

Chris is shaking his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t understand anything anymore. Nothing in this world makes sense.”

The look on Darren’s face clearly says he has no idea what’s going on, for which Chord is seriously grateful. He sits down at the table between them and takes a sip of his coffee. “You guys are weird,” he says, “and also, those two little girls back there have been taking pictures of you for the last five minutes. I give it negative eight seconds before they reach Tumblr.”

“Great,” Chord sighs. “That’s exactly what I need.”

“It could be worse,” Chris says logically. “Have you _seen_ what some of those kids are able to do with Photoshop?”

Chord shudders. “I’m going back to bed,” he says, and he leaves his full plate of food on the table, hopes and prays that this conversation will never, ever leave this room.

 

“Have you ever—you know. With a guy?” Chord asks. They’re sitting outside in the heat, shielded by the buses, letting their feet dangle above the cement below. Chord can’t even remember how long they’ve been doing this. It seems like a pretty important conversation to have, though. And maybe a little overdue. Not that he’s thinking about—about _you know_ ing with another dude. Blowjobs were one thing. That’s, like, a whole different realm.

“You can say the word ‘sex,’ Chord,” Darren says, laughing. “I think we’ve reached that point where we can start using those words.”

“You knew what I meant.”

“Fine.” Darren kicks his feet back against the concrete. He looks like he’s having a minor internal debate, before finally he looks at Chord and nods. “I have, yeah. Twice.”

Chord goes quiet. “Oh,” he says, and he stares off in the distance. He can feel Darren’s eyes on him.

“Does that bug you?”

It does, sort of, no matter how illogical it is. It’s just strange to think that Darren knows what he’s doing, while Chord’s been thrown overboard and he was just left there to tread.

“Why would that bug me?”

“I don’t know,” Darren says. “The human mind is a complex phenomenon. Who knows why we feel the way we feel?”

“You make it sound scientific,” Chord says, but Darren’s right. Like now, for instance. He’s annoyed and even he doesn’t know why.

“It is scientific,” Darren argues, but then he pauses. “But it’s also not. There’s nothing scientific about this.” He reaches out, almost tentatively, and picks up Chord’s hand between his own. Chord’s heart stutters a step. After everything they’ve done, they’ve never done _this._ He doesn’t know why he’s letting him, but he does, and Darren twines their fingers together loosely, studies the way their thumbs overlap. It feels weirdly nice. The way holding hands with someone for the first time always does. Darren smiles. “We’re kind of dating, aren’t we,” he says, and it’s not even really a question, doesn’t look to Chord for confirmation.

Chord lets out a long breath. “I think so,” he agrees. “How’d that happen?”

“Science,” Darren says, and they laugh and untangle their hands when they have to go back inside, but the treading in uncharted waters feels a little easier. Like maybe he’s floating instead.

 

‘Dating’ doesn’t mean relationship, not exactly. Chord’s not going around thinking _I’m somebody’s boyfriend._ He hopes Darren’s not doing that either. It does mean, though, that one night he’s out with Mark and Harry, and this girl comes up to him, and she’s hot, like, really hot, and she’s wearing next to nothing, and Chord buys her a drink because it’s the polite thing to do, and they talk for almost half an hour, and she keeps looking at his lips in that way that girls have, and then finally, when the night’s winding down, she invites him back to her hotel room.

And Chord isn’t even really thinking about it before saying, “Ah, no thanks,” and she stares at him for five whole seconds like something’s wrong with him, and then she says, “You don’t even have to spend the night,” and Chord sort of wishes Darren there, for no reason whatsoever, and he repeats, “Thanks, but I’m kind of—I’m kind of seeing someone.”

And so she grabs her purse and flounces off in anger and Mark puts his arm around Chord’s shoulder and says, “Man, what is _wrong_ with you, why’d you lie to her like that?” and Chord shakes him off and tells him that he just wasn’t in the mood, which is at least half-true. Well. He wasn’t in the mood for _her._

That night he and Darren come dangerously close to ‘you know.’ Chord’s not even freaked out about it, not like he should be. Things are… good. They’re good.

 

With less than two weeks of the tour left, his manager gives him a call.

He’s sharing a room with Cory tonight, and they’re flipping through the channels on TV when his phone rings. He pushes himself up off the bed and goes out into the hall to answer it. His manager never calls except to talk business, so Chord thinks maybe there’s an opportunity lining up, a singing gig or some guest starring role that’ll happen before filming starts for season three.

It’s not that, though. It’s nothing like that.

“Chord,” his manager tells him, and he sounds oddly serious, “I want to tell you something, and I wanted to be the first one to tell you.”

And Chord’s already feeling weird enough lately that this doesn’t even register. He digs his toes into the carpet and says, “Okay.”

Even still there’s a long pause on the phone. Like he’s afraid to come out with it. Like he doesn’t want to say what he’s about to say.

Finally, finally, he says, “You’re not being picked up as a series regular.”

Chord’s stomach drops. That was the last thing he’d been expecting, but it’s not—it’s not the end of the world, right, there were still a few of them that were on recurring contracts, it’s not like he’s being fired. It kind of sucks, but he’ll get over it. He has to. “Okay,” he says evenly. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“That’s not all.”

This time Chord’s stomach really plunges, because his manager doesn’t do the thing where he plays bad news good news. It’s going to be bad news bad news. He can tell. “Yeah?”

“Darren Criss and Harry Shum Jr. _were_ picked up as series regulars.”

And that’s the worst fucking thing he’s heard all day.

It’s—he doesn’t know how to walk the line between being happy for them (because he _is_ happy for them, it’s a huge thing, it’s big, it’s great) and feeling like he’d just been kicked in the balls and told he wasn’t good enough. That’s what this boils down to, isn’t it? Chord’s not good enough to be a regular. He’s not good enough to be one of _them._ He’s been on the show longer than Darren has. He’s had more lines than Harry has. And still. The truth is staring him right in the eye.

He fucking hates the truth.

“Wow,” Chord says, and there’s something almost like a burning in the back of his eyes but he blinks it away, because no. He’s not that dude. “That’s… okay. Yeah, okay.”

“We have options,” his manager says. “I’ll let you sleep on this, but there are other things we can explore.”

“Sure,” says Chord, not really thinking, because his voice doesn’t even sound like a real voice anymore, maybe just a faint buzzing in the background. “Right. I’ll, uh. We’ll talk later. I’m gonna—like you said, I’m gonna sleep on it.”

“Okay. Don’t get too discouraged.”

“Right.” Except Chord’s sort of laughing about that as he hangs up the phone. Don’t get too discouraged? As if anything good could come from this? He walks back into the room, feels like a zombie. Like his vision has gone all weirdly Technicolor and fuzzy.

“You okay, man?” Cory asks, squinting at him.

Chord can’t remember what he was doing before the call. He climbs up into bed and lays flat on his back, doesn’t even bother with pillows, stares up at the ceiling. He can still feel Cory’s concerned gaze on the side of his face. Cory’s been a series regular since day one. There was never any question about his contract. He wouldn’t understand. “I’m going to bed,” Chord mumbles, and it sounds like he’s speaking through a vacuum. It’s stupid, because he knows he’ll never be able to turn his brain off enough to actually sleep. He thinks about texting Darren, and then—that thought almost makes him sit up straight in bed. Did Darren know? All this time, with everything that was happening—did Darren already know? He must’ve. How could he not?

Bile climbs up Chord’s throat. He forces it back down.

Just as he’d predicted, he doesn’t sleep a single second all night long.

 

Cory’s gone before he is the next morning. Every action feels sluggish. Even buttoning his pants takes five minutes longer than normal. There’s a knock at the door. Chord finishes pulling his shirt on over his head before he even thinks about answering it. It’s Darren. Of course it is.

“Morning,” he says cheerfully, grinning and leaning in the second the door behind him has closed. Good morning kisses aren’t unusual, not lately. Chord turns his cheek.

Darren blinks at him when his lips connect with the side of Chord’s jaw, but he recovers quickly. “You okay?” he asks, running his hand along Chord’s side. Chord pulls away. There’s that need-to-throw-up feeling again. He really, really wants to be left alone.

“Fine,” he says flatly, turning around and shoving last night’s clothes into his suitcase. Darren hovers in the doorway, unsure.

“Chord…” he says, and it’s like something inside Chord snaps. He drops his shirt, turns to face Darren. Can’t help his expression, the anger unrolling in his chest.

“How long have you known?” he demands.

Darren looks bewildered, and that just pisses him off even more. He hates people who play coy. He hates everything about this. “Known what?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t fucking do that. How long have you known?”

“Chord, I don’t—”

And Chord’s just… just exploding over the top with feelings. He feels mentally unstable and stupid for buying into this for so long, for thinking he’d felt some sort of attachment, some sense of belonging. He knows, deep down, that absolutely none of this is Darren’s fault, this has absolutely nothing to do with him, and yet it hurts so fucking bad and he has no one else to blame, no one else to take his anger out on. He wants to punch something. Put his fist through the wall. “How long have you known that you got promoted and I didn’t?” he asks, chest sort of heaving, the back of his neck boiling hot.

The color drains from Darren’s face, and he can’t even pretend to deny it. “Chord,” he says quietly, “I’m really—”

But Chord doesn’t want to hear that, not right now. “How long?”

And Darren goes quiet and there’s nothing in the room but radio silence and Chord’s heavy breathing and Darren looks at him, soft and sad, and says in a voice that’s too hushed to be his own, “A week.”

A week. A fucking week.

“That’s great,” Chord says, and he’s laughing now, because what other choice does he have? “That’s awesome, really, man. Thanks for letting me know. What, were you having a big fucking laugh about it behind my back? You and Harry?”

“No!” Darren says quickly, and his eyes are widening, like he’s—like he’s hurt by the accusation, and Chord’s so mad he’s just thinking fuck it, seriously, fuck Darren for lying to him and fuck himself for believing it.

“You didn’t say anything. You could’ve said _something._ ”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you—”

“Oh, fuck you,” Chord says loudly, doesn’t even bother to keep his voice down, doesn’t know how. Let the neighbors next door hear. He doesn’t give a shit. “All that bullshit about—about you and me, you _knew_ and you weren’t going to tell me, that’s freaking cowardly, man. So—so what? You could get into my pants for a week longer?”

“Chord, seriously, no, that’s not it at _all_ —”

“Whatever. Just… get out.”

Darren looks more hurt than Chord has ever seen him, but the thing is, he doesn’t even care. He has no right to look like that. He’s got the whole fucking world handed to him on a silver platter. Since day one, his face has been everywhere. He could have anything he ever wanted. He was promoted to series regular after half a season, just because he’s—because he’s what Chord couldn’t be. What Chord wasn’t good enough for.

“Chord,” he says again, and his eyes are almost pleading. “Just—let’s talk, okay?”

“No,” Chord says immediately. He’s fine with being petty. He thinks it’s way overdue. “Get out. I’m serious. This—this thing, I’m done. It’s done.”

“It’s not even that big of a deal, they still want you back—”

“Right,” Chord says, and his hands drop down to his sides limply. He shakes his head, laughs again. Of course it’s not that big of a deal. Not when it’s happening to him. “Okay, Darren. Thanks for the perspective. I’m serious now. Get out.”

And Darren doesn’t really have a choice, even though he looks like it’s the last thing he wants to do. He backs up towards the door, but slowly, like he’s expecting Chord to stop him.

He doesn’t.

“They still want you,” Darren says quietly, hand on the doorknob, and then, even more quietly, “ _I_ still want you.”

“I’m done,” Chord says again. His ears are ringing, his skin prickling. “Seriously. I’m done.”

Darren casts him one more lingering look, and his eyes are shining, and his eyebrows are drawn in, but Chord doesn’t say anything so he opens the door and he leaves. It takes a good three minutes for Chord to remember how to breathe normally. He sits down on the corner of the mattress and shoves his knuckles into his eyes and tries his best to count backwards.

This time, it doesn’t help.

 

Chord spends the next two days avoiding everyone. He stays to himself every minute they’re not on stage, and even then he’s burnt out, lackluster, doesn’t get into it the way he normally does. They all keep shooting him these concerned looks and it drives him crazy. How’s he supposed to dance with them when he’s not one of them? Why is he finishing the tour at all?

He spends a lot of time on the phone with his manager. They talk about everything, every possible option. “You don’t have to come back, you know,” he tells Chord, and Chord’s heart sort of clenches at the idea, but. But still. “You don’t have to come back at all.”

Another two days and he’s made his decision.

It’s the hardest fucking thing he’s ever had to do.

 

The night before the last show—they’re in Ireland, Chord’s not going to miss this because he’s sulking alone in his room—they all go out together. Like a final toast to the crazy summer they’ve had. A temporary goodbye to each other. Temporary for some of them, anyway. They score a back room at a fancy Irish restaurant and the beer flows freely and Chord feels good, or at least better than he has in a week. He’s on his fourth Guinness when someone taps their spoon against their glass, and then there’s speeches being made, funny ones; no one’s really taking this seriously. Darren’s at the opposite end of the table, sandwiched in between Lea and Naya, and he’s quieter than he usually is, more thoughtful.

When it’s Chord’s turn he clears his throat. He hasn’t told them yet. He hasn’t really known how to. He stands up a little unsteadily, looks at them all, and forces himself to smile. “So, uh,” he says, “this was a kickass summer, and thank you guys for letting me be part of it. You guys are some of the best friends I’ve ever had, so, uh.” His throat tightens. He wants to blame it on the beer, the environment, but he just tightens his grip around his cup and tries not to let his voice break. “That’s why it sucks that… I’m, uh, I’m not coming back next season.”

There’s a ghostly silence in the room. Thirteen faces look back at him, shocked, and then Mark says, “Wait, dude, what?”

“I’m focusing on my music,” Chord says, which was the stock answer his manager had given him. “And I’ll really miss you guys, but I know you’ll be awesome, and we’ll stay in contact and… and yeah.”

“Chordy,” Dianna says, and it looks like she’s about to cry, so he has to rip his eyes away and stare at the ceiling instead. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. So. Tomorrow we’ll have fun, and let’s not—let’s not make this weird, because I’m not dying. I’m not disappearing off the face of the planet. I love all of y’all.” He pauses. “That’s all,” he adds, and then he sits back down.

Lea reaches over and puts her hand over his. Kevin drapes his arm around the back of his chair. Chord doesn’t want to look, but he does, and Darren’s staring down at his plate silently, not saying a word.

It takes ten minutes for someone else to start talking. Cory finally stands up and makes jokes, lightens the mood, and Chord’s heart feels so heavy he’s surprised it hasn’t sank into his stomach, but at least it’s over with. At least that part is done.

 

They do have fun the next night. They go a little crazy. Someone busts out the waterguns, and they’re chasing each other around stage, and making faces while they’re performing. Ashley tells him backstage that Darren kissed Chris during his their skit, just really smacked a big one on him, and Chord pretends to laugh like that’s funny but he actually feels like there’s a hole in his gut. After the show they all hug and hug and hug like they’re never going to see each other again, and maybe it’s just halfway playing it up for the crowd, but it really does feel like that. It feels very final. Chord has to tell himself to keep smiling because he doesn’t know what the alternative is.

Later that night he goes out and gets very, very drunk. So drunk he doesn’t even really remember what happens, which is fine with him. He’s actually starting to think it’s better that way

 

The rest of the summer, once he’s back in America, happens in a blur. The news had leaked to the media; his manager tells him not to answer any questions, not to accept any calls. It’s like he knows Chord sucks at interviews, knows he’ll say the wrong thing, and he’s trying to avoid it before it happens. Falling from Glee is a pretty damn long way to fall. “Let’s not make it sound any worse than it is,” his manager tells him.

So he turns into somewhat of a recluse. He spends a week with his family, but he doesn’t even tell them the whole story, just lets them act all surprised and comforting towards him, and then once he’s back in Los Angeles he dives into his music. He still hangs out with Cory and Mark in their downtime. He goes to events but skips the red carpets. He ignores three phone calls and five texts from Darren.

In a way, this whole thing is a relief. He can forget about Darren, about the whole weird thing that went on this summer. Pretend it never happened. He doesn’t need to have any conversations. Doesn’t need for anyone to know. Doesn’t have to make himself even more of a fucking social outcast than he already is.

Four days before filming starts for season three, Chord walks down the street at The Grove alone, and there’s a guy with a camera there—there’s always guys with cameras there. Paparazzi hang out there pretty much all the time, waiting. Stalking their prey.

He doesn’t even look at Chord, though. Doesn’t try once to take his picture.

It’s one of the most depressing things Chord has ever experienced. Ever.

 

He meets Emma at some press event. She’s cute, and fun, and easy to talk to. She’s the opposite of Darren in every single way.

Maybe that’s why he keeps her around.

 

He doesn’t watch the first episode of season three until a week and a half after it’s aired, and even then it’s alone in his apartment at night, because he doesn’t know how he’s going to feel, doesn’t know how he’s going to react. Really, though, it just makes him fucking sad and lonely, and his heart does this stupid thing when he sees Darren on screen for the first time, and he thinks about calling him and apologizing for his blowup, and telling him that he was really awesome, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’d called Darren a coward but it was obvious who the real coward here was. It’d been him all along.

Darren eventually stops calling. Chord’s both relieved and a little bitter that he’s seemed to finally, finally give up.

 

Three weeks after that all of the relief has drained out. It’s just bitterness now. Like when you know you’ve lost something that’s impossible to get back. That’s what Darren is. Chord hates this person he’s become, but he doesn’t know who else he could possibly be.

 

 

 

His manager calls him again in the middle of a music session, which is actually an ‘eat Spaghetti-O’s and watch stupid Youtube videos’ session. That’s what most of his sessions look like these days. He’s pathetic.

“If you want back in,” his manager tells him, not bothering with pleasantries, “they’ll have you. Starting mid-season. It’s your choice. Nothing’s set in stone, but if you miss Glee—now’s your chance to come back.”

Chord drops the bowl and doesn’t even care when the red sauce splashes all over his carpet, his couch. He takes stupidly long breaths, like his respiratory system can’t keep up with the rest of him. It’s—he can’t help it. He can’t stop grinning. He can’t remember why he’d denied their offer in the first place. It might not be a series regular offer, but it’s an offer. He wants back. He wants his old life back so _badly._

But he tells his manager to let him think about it and then he spends twenty minutes drafting a text to Mark. _Should Sam Evans come back 2 Mckinley?_ is what he finally decides on, and within five seconds his phone is buzzing, and Mark’s response is in all capital letters, a very emphatic, _UH… YES._

Half of his brain considers texting Darren again, but what good would that do? It’d just be awkward, and—and if this thing is real, if this is legit, he’ll see him on set in a little over a month and a half and he’s not even sure that’s enough time to prepare himself, so he doesn’t want to sidle that unnecessary panic on himself right now.

Instead he calls his manager back. He picks up on the first ring.

“I’m in,” Chord says.

His whole body has goosebumps.

 

The first day back on set feels like a birthday party where he’s the guest of honor. He gets about thirty-seven body-crushing hugs from anyone and everyone, the cast and the crew and even the guy that brings donuts and bagels every morning. He’s spent the last few weeks mentally preparing himself and even still he doesn’t really feel ready. He trails after Cory and feels a little awkward, new kid syndrome all over, except that it quickly slips away into the comfort he’d once developed, which is the greatest feeling he’s ever experienced.

He doesn’t see Darren until lunchtime. He’s leaving the bathroom when Darren’s about to enter. They do a weird little sidestep right outside the door before they both give up and lock eyes, and Chord offers up a tentative smile. “Hey,” he says, unsure.

Darren, though, he doesn’t know how to stay mad at people. Or maybe he doesn’t know how to stay mad at Chord. “Hey,” he says, and he offers him a handshake. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks, man.”

The handshake doesn’t linger. Chord sort of wants it to.

“So,” Darren says.

“I’ve missed you,” Chord says.

Darren’s eyebrows—those damn eyebrows—climb dangerously high on his face. That’s not the sort of thing Chord allows himself to say, ever, especially not to other dudes. It’s something Darren would say. Thoughtless and easy and unafraid of implications. Apparently he’s rubbed off on him.

“You too,” Darren says. “You didn’t call me back.”

“Yeah.” Chord rubs the back of his neck, isn’t going to make up any lies or excuses, no _my phone’s been out of service._ He lifts his shoulders into an apologetic shrug. “I’ve been too busy being a wimp.”

“You’re not a wimp,” Darren says, almost like it’s a reflex.

“Sometimes I am.”

“Well,” Darren says. “You’ve got plenty of time to change that.”

“Yeah,” Chord says again. He looks at Darren, really looks at him, the way he hasn’t allowed himself to do in months. And it’s like back when he used to tell himself that he was screwed, except he doesn’t feel screwed anymore. For once he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong about this. He lets his hand drop back to his side. “I’m playing a stripper.”

Darren laughs. “I know.”

“I guess that’s the hell you pay when you piss off Ryan Murphy.”

“I think they’re actually just pandering to the audience. The whole world wants to see you naked, Chord.”

Chord smiles, a real smile this time. “Even you?”

He’s joking, but Darren answers anyway. Because that’s the kind of person he is. Because those are the kind of people they are. “Even me,” he says. “Even when you’ve blown me off for two months. You’re not getting an apology pizza this time.”

“I think it’s my turn to order the apology pizza,” Chord says, and then, testing out the waters, “My apartment? Tonight?”

There’s a brief pause between them. Darren looks like he’s considering it, like he’s not sure he wants to jump back into this. But maybe he thinks Chord’s just as magnetic and likable as Darren is, even if he isn’t. Even if he’s nowhere close.

“Yeah,” Darren says. “If you’re paying.”

“Then it’s a date,” Chord says, and Darren doesn’t correct him. He just nods and disappears into the bathroom, and Chord has no answer for when Mark asks him why he’s smiling so creepily, and he really doesn’t care. It’s a date.

He's not thinking about the glitz and glamour. About fame and celebrity and about having his picture taken at 7-Eleven. This is all he wanted. His friends and this show and this—this whatever it is, this thing with Darren. When he looks at the big picture…things really aren’t so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a Quiet Company song.


End file.
